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#1464: Coldplay – Violet Hill

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Eighteen years can go by just like that, apparently. It was 2008 that Coldplay released Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. I was 13, a full functioning human being. A naïve one, but existing nonetheless. I was aware of my surroundings and knew my right from wrong. And I remember, very clearly, ‘Violet Hill’ being the new video, the new single by the band as if it were a couple weeks ago. When I saw/heard the tune, I was into it from the jump. The song, I think, is still the coolest one the band have ever done. If there was a contest for coolest Coldplay song, ‘Violet Hill’ should win it hands down. I was pretty conscious for the X&Y era. ‘Speed of Sound’, ‘Fix You’, ‘The Hardest Part’, although I have no kind of beef with those tunes, you could say they’re very stereotypically Coldplay. No one but Coldplay could have written and performed those songs. What struck me about ‘Violet Hill’ those first times hearing it was how un-Coldplay it sounded. Even today, it can sometimes surprise me that it’s Coldplay I’m listening to when ‘Violet Hill’ gets to playing in the shuffled playlist. It’s almost experimental by their standards. It was the first Coldplay song that got me excited for an upcoming release of theirs.

I’m trying to think if there’s another song of Coldplay’s that I consider better than ‘Violet Hill’, and I’ve gotta say, I don’t think there is a song by them that I personally enjoy more. I kind of like everything about it. Except for that “My nerves are poles that unfroze” lyric. The phrasing always felt a little strange to me. Is ‘unfroze’ a word used on a regular basis? I don’t know. Other than that, I think Chris Martin’s never sounded better vocal-wise. Just the tone of it. Maybe it’s the microphone he was using, the production, the studio he was in. Whatever it was, it helped. The “ba-dam ba-dam” guitar riff that happens during the verses are very cool. “Jagged” is the word used on Wikipedia under the song’s composition section. A very suitable adjective. It applies to the solo too. A bit repetitive, sure. But again, it’s the tone. Jon Buckland plays his guitar very differently to his usual style in the song. There are those wild guitar string bends going on in the back when Martin sings the “When the future’s architectured… / “Bury me in armour” parts of the verses. All adds to the drama. I think Guy Berryman’s bass line throughout is quite underrated too. He’s right in the pocket, and he does these little fills here and there which hit the spot. Then all the commotion’s swiped away to leave Martin singing the last section on his own with his piano. It’s all good, good stuff. And this album is where some people say Coldplay changed for the worse. Couldn’t be more wrong. The next album, though, we could have a conversation about.

So what’s it about? What’s it about? Well, obviously there’s a relationship situation going on within the song. “If you love me, won’t you let me know?” The chorus line sung in unison by the entire band with Martin’s going into falsetto for a brief moment in the centre. It’s great how he sings quite low in the verses that it feels like a climactic moment when he goes to a higher register for those choruses. And then, with the talk about ‘a carnival of idiots on show’, not wanting to be a soldier and a fox becoming God, well, that’s all a metaphor for the USA in the mid-2000s. George Bush Jr. in charge, no one taking him all that seriously. Where does a fox come into it? The fox is meant to be a reference to FOX News. So there you go. It’s anti-war, and it’s about looking at America, making a commentary on their society at the time and thinking, “What the hell is going on over there?” Some things never change. You don’t feel as if there’s a lot of hope left by the end of the song. It’s hearing it within the context of the album that I think elevates it that little more, ’cause ‘Strawberry Swing’ follows, arriving as the most optimistic song on there. That last leg of Viva… from the title track onwards, that’s a strong, strong run. So you may be able to guess, this won’t be the last song of the LP to be covered here.

#1377: Green Day – Tight Wad Hill

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Anyone remember the Green Day: Rock Band game? Came as a shock to me when it was initially announced in 2010. It was so close to the Beatles game that had been out for only over half a year at the time, and I like Green Day but I also felt there would have been so many more classic rock bands Harmonix could have dedicated a Rock Band game to. Like Led Zeppelin, or The Who or something. Green Day was a cool choice, though. I wasn’t complaining. I got the game. It was fun to play through the whole of American Idiot, Dookie, a large majority of 21st Century Breakdown and other well-known Green Day songs. Green Day was my favourite band for a while in 2005. By 2010, I’d had physical copies of Dookie, American Idiot, International Superhits… even 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours for years. But I think it was the release of this game that provided the impetus to dive deeper into the band’s discography as the year went on.

One day I came upon Insomniac, the band’s pissed-off, harder rocking follow-up to Dookie, the band’s big breakthrough album that had only been released a year before. It’s my favourite album of theirs because of the previously listed adjectives. I was well-acquainted with the singles from there, which I never fell out of love with, and the other songs on there were just more of the same. ‘Tight Wad Hill’ is the second-last number on Insomniac. I’ve been around Green Day forums and Reddit pages, and it looked to me that whenever there’s a ranking going on ‘Tight Wad…’ is the tune that’s always rated the worst or the least best. I remember liking it off the rip. Before then, I’d read about how it was almost the title track of the album before the bandmembers decided on ‘Insomniac’, so I reckoned it must have been considered a bit of an important song amongst the band during the album’s making.

Reasons I could think of, though. It follows the musical pattern of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-instrumental break-chorus that’s damn near on every other song on the album. The song details the depressing experiences of a drug addict, and that’s already covered with ‘Geek Stink Breath’, which also provides a more personal level of perspective. It’s also near the album’s end, so listeners are probably just waiting to see how the whole thing officially finishes. But it’s fast, it hits hard – Tré Cool’s pounding away on his drum set – it’s heavy, makes me wanna scrunch my face up. Billie Joe Armstrong’s sings an infectious melody with a snotty snarl, and Mike Dirnt’s playing some very cool lines on the bass guitar. And that’s Insomniac all over. ‘Tight Wad Hill’ does the job, it’s a great representative. Just a shame the band rarely play anything from this album. Insomniac appreciators out there, I’m with you.