Music: New Coldplay Single Downloaded Two Million Times, Kind of Sucks

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mojo-photo-coldplayviva.jpgBritish band Coldplay posted a link to a new song, “Violet Hill,” on their official website starting last Tuesday, and since then the free download has been accessed over two million times, reports the UK Telegraph. To put it in perspective, the Telegraph says that all the UK top 40 singles combined sold around 500,000 copies in the same period. Lesson: People like free stuff.

Coldplay released the single in advance of their somewhat-anticipated new album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (out June 17th), an appallingly-titled collection of songs which, as we reported here on the Riff last year, were supposed to have a “Hispanic theme.” However, “Violet Hill” has about as much Latin flavor as an Eskimo pie, and lead singer Chris Martin is even singing about cold weather: “Was a long and dark December/From the rooftops I remember/There was snow/White snow.” As opposed to the purple kind? The song opens with a whooshy, 40-second intro, then erupts into a turgid, stomping beat, reminiscent of nothing so much as “Bennie and the Jets.” It should either be twice as fast or twice as slow. Okay, I guess I kind of like the refrain, “If you love me, won’t you let me know,” but let’s compare and contrast: the other day I heard “Warning Sign” on the radio, a stunning ballad from 2002’s Rush of Blood to the Head. An insistent, wobbling tone, alternating between two notes, gives the song a hypnotic sense of uncertainty, building in intensity until a sudden acoustic coda in a new key finds Martin hoping to “crawl back into your open arms.” Structured similarly but lacking even a modicum of “Sign”‘s emotional complexity, “Hill” is a pale, white-snow-colored imitation.

Download “Violet Hill” on Coldplay’s web site here.

After the jump, check out a cute fan-made video for “Warning Sign.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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