Christian ideas in Coldplay

The lyrics of much modern popular music give little cause for reflection. I remember pondering for quite some time as a teenager in the 90s who loved some songs by Oasis what their lyrics meant. Part of the delight of listening to the songs, I think, was the task of trying to work out what those catchy but elusive lyrics might best be taken to mean. 'So Sally can wait, she knows it's too late...' And so on. Who was Sally? In what sense might the addressee of 'Don't look back in anger', one of their most famous songs, put her 'life in the hands of a rock and roll band and throw it all away'? And why would anyone 'stand up beside the fireplace'? I was evidently not alone in having such thoughts. Noel Gallagher, the song's composer and lyricist was asked by another curious party about what he had meant when he wrote the words. His answer? Quite a disappointment: he'd been high on cocaine and simply wrote down words that sounded good next to each other. The 'revolution from bed', to which the song refers, was a simple casual reference to one of those iconic moments in the career of John Lennon, whom Oasis were intent on eulogising - but it bore no reference to any wider pattern of thinking in Don't Look back in Anger. How could listening to the song, then, stir such enjoyment in a listener like myself - including, I might add, a genuine enjoyment of its lyrics - when, at root, those lyrics represent little more than a casually thrown together pattern of banal vagaries? One for the philosophers, perhaps.

I'm not a massive fan of Coldplay. But since I have lived life for a while now as someone who decries the absence of deep and systematic thinking in the world of popular culture - and whose patience with banal lyrics is in most cases beyond exhaustion (unless the song really is exceptional - I would make a case for Pork and Beans by Weezer) - I have been interested recently to listen to Viva la Vida, a song they released earlier this year. The song, certainly, has a catchy tune. But it's the lyrics that I really liked. And I liked them, I must be clear, because I heard genuinely thoughtful and interesting content in amongst them - and, an added bonus, some pretty clear allusions to some paradigmatic Christian ideas. References to 'missionaries in foreign fields', St. Peter at heaven's gate, the troubled predicament of a king and his feelings of abandonment and dispossession, and even to the topography of Rome and Jerusalem. This is not the first time I've detected Christian sentiment in Coldplay songs. Their song 'The Message' contains a number of very obvious borrowings from the Christian hymn Love Unknown, (a hymn known to me in the form it was set to music by John Ireland), whose lyrics were written in the 17th century by Samuel Crossman. Having googled this, I came across an excellent post on another blog which teases out some of the similiarities and differences between the use of the same lyrics between Coldplay and Crossman.

I want to end this post on a negative note, however; for while it's uplifting to find a mainstream band such as Coldplay exploring and utilising Christian themes and ideas in their music, it saddened me to think that if their band members were to make any public display or profession of Christianity (and I should say here that I have no idea whether Chris Martin, the lead singer, or any other band members think of themselves as Christians), I strongly suspect it would be a total PR disaster. There are ways, of course, to present Christian ideas - and their presentation need not be a disaster. But the declaration of one's own allegiance to them would no doubt alienate many young people who 'know better'. Or maybe I'm wrong about this? If Coldplay were to declare themselves Christians in an interview, perhaps no one would really be surprised. The harm, surely, would be greater for a band like Oasis: their image, no doubt wouldn't take such a revelation well at all! But even with a band like Oasis, their (more thoughtful) lyrics might be taken to bear in an interesting way on Christian thinking. The lyrics of Champagne Supernova and Little by Little and even, if I'm really pushing it, Live Forever, could perhaps be taken as starting points here. For me, at any rate, to think through why these lyrics 'work' in their own often peculiar ways (when they do) inevitably involves thinking through what they have to tell me about Christianity. Coldplay certainly make the connection explicit at certain places; as an interpreter of an Oasis song, you have to be more imaginative. But the connection can still be made, I think.