British 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.”
