A Little Something About Coldplay

If you take a look at my "Currently Listening To" section along the right side, you'll see a pretty wide variety of music in there. I like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Springsteen and the Who through Weezer, Nirvana and Hum and down to Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, the New Pornographers, and Radiohead. I have a pretty diverse collection.

I'm also fairly picky. I don't like things just because critics fawn all over them. I've started going back through Jimi Hendrix's work, and I'm really not impressed. I think the Doors were overrated. I can't listen to Girl Talk because it annoys me. I've tried getting into TV on the Radio, and it just hasn't clicked. I really liked Weezer's new album, even though a lot of critics didn't.

That being said, I don't get all the hate for Coldplay. If you look all over the interwebs, you'll see people bashing them left and right, calling them a homeless man's U2, saying that they're no-talent hacks and the like. Among the internetati, it's a foregone conclusion that they stole a song from Joe Satriani. It goes on and on.

I don't get why a halfway-decent band inspires such hate. I mean, okay, X & Y was a lousy album. It had its moments, but it was pretty lame. But Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head are pretty much unimpeachable. Viva La Vida is a great, great album and one of my favorites of 2008.

Now, I can get that you may not like that style of music. I get that. I also get that sometimes people don't want to see someone get successful doing something that's really not that special. I get that. But the unbridled hate for Coldplay really doesn't have any basis. I mean, I can say, "Coldplay is the suckiest sucky band ever to suck," but unless I have something to back it up it's a worthless opinion.

I guess where I'm trying to go is that I hate the drive-by criticism of the internet. It's so easy for critics to swoop past any argument or site and say "You suck" without any basis. Coldplay is one example of how real life many times bears no relation to what happens on the internet.