It was their first album. It went multi-platinum both in the U.S. and in the U.K. It walked off with the Grammy Award for the Best Alternative Music Album in 2002. It put them on the music world’s radar screen. The cover photograph was taken with a disposable Kodak camera, of a globe purchased for a mere 10 pounds, a globe that showed up in their music videos and on its tours. It’s Coldplay’s “Parachutes”.
So what went into the making of this powerful debut album? There are a few eyebrow-raising surprises lurking underneath. Such as…
1) “Don’t Panic”. Firstly, there’s the name change. It was originally titled “Panic” (makes you wonder which one the band was suggesting we all do). An earlier version of this song had a different melody. The lyrics of this previous version were about front man Chris Martin’s “slightly disastrous evening” with a young woman named Alice Hill. Sample lyric: “Bones, sinking like stones, all that we fought for, homes, places we’ve grown, all of us are done for.”
2) “Shiver” A minor version of the guessing game ignited by Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” occurred after Martin acknowledged that “Shiver” was written for a real woman (presumably with a real address, birth date and social security number). But it seems that he wasn’t thinking of her while writing the song; instead he focused on Australian singer-songwriter Natalie Imbruglia, using her as a focal point because he needed to envision a sexy woman. Sample lyric: “Did you want me to change? Well I changed for good. And I want you to know that you’ll always get your way”
3) “Spies” This song got the album banned in China. Need I say more?
4) “Yellow” The big hit from “Parachutes”. When Martin was having trouble finding the words he wanted he glanced around the studio he was in and found the Yellow Pages (one can only wonder what kind of song he would have ended up with had it been “Popular Mechanics” or “National Geographic” instead). As Martin himself joked, “In an alternate universe, this song could be called ‘Playboy’.” He also claimed on the Howard Stern Show in November 2011 that the word “yellow” had no meaning whatsoever. “It was simply because that word sounded nice,” he once said.
As a songwriter myself I can tell you that you sometimes have to use anything that might be at hand or available for inspiration. Coldplay had been recording in a Rockfield, Wales studio. One night, just after they finished recording “Shiver” they took a break outside. It was a beautiful, clear night with a breathtaking view of the heavens. Co-Producer Ken Nelson instructed the band to look at the stars, which they did. The end result? Sample lyric: “Look at the stars. Look how they shine for you”.
5) “Trouble” or, “Rock Stars Behaving Badly.” Martin admitted that the song was inspired by his own less-than-stellar conduct. “There were some bad things going in our band… the song is about behaving badly towards somebody you really love and I was certainly doing that to some members of the band,” he acknowledged. Sample lyric: “Oh no, I see, a spider web, it’s tangled up with me. And I lost my head, the thought of all the stupid things I said.”