By the time 2008 arrived, Coldplay were arguably the biggest rock band in the world. With their uplifting, emotionally charged soft rock, Coldplay quickly established themselves as heirs to U2. From the release of their debut album, Parachutes, in 2000, the band caught lightning in a bottle. The album’s wistful second single, “Yellow,” was an international hit.
Their second album, 2002’s A Rush of Blood to the Head, elevated them to the next level, selling more than 17 million copies and netting them 3 Grammy Awards. Coldplay were no longer the little Brit band that could, they were the big Brit band that did! Singer Chris Martin was now a bona fide heartthrob, but he wasn’t on the market for long. He met Gwyneth Paltrow on tour and - boom - one year later they were married! 
After that, life and touring slowed things down a little for Coldplay, but in 2005 they returned with their third album, X&Y. Although it didn’t show much progress creatively, the album once again sold kajillions of copies and gave us the mega-ballad “Fix You,” which Martin wrote for his famous wife after her father died.
X&Y closed the book on what Coldplay’s album trilogy, as guitarist Jonny Buckland would call it. He told Rolling Stone in 2008, “We felt like the first three albums were a trilogy, and we finished that. So we wanted to do something different.” The band found a new studio, converting an old bakery squished between an estate agent and a restaurant that they could use as both a headquarters and a space to rehearse and record. 
Taking a page out of U2’s book, the band hired Brian Eno, the father of ambient music, to co-produce their next album. Known for helping artists like U2 and Talking Heads expand their sound, when Coldplay first asked the producer what they should do differently this time around, he was, well, brutally honest.
In a 2008 interview with Rolling Stone, Chris Martin recalled how Brian Eno did not hold back, saying quote 
“Your songs are too long. And you’re too repetitive, and you use the same tricks too much, and big things aren’t necessarily good things, and you use the same sounds too much, and your lyrics are not good enough.”
With Eno now on board, and a hunger to truly reinvent every facet of themselves, Coldplay would embark on their most ambitious project yet: Viva La Vida.
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