Peeking out of the roof of my mailbox was a recent issue of Rolling Stone featuring yet another oversized platitude for its cover artist.
Clad in some sort of purple matador costume with a wide-eyed stare to rival the leader of the Heaven's Gate cult, Coldplay's Chris Martin sits perched against an angelic white background with one of the most disappointing thoughts to grace the front of a magazine apt to heap unnecessary praise: Confessions of an Anxious Rock God.
Holy hyperbole, Batman. "Anxious rock god?" Anxious? Maybe. I dunno. I wasn't there. But rock god?
However, the more I thought about it, I came to two conclusions. No. 1, it's pretty hard to argue that Martin & Co. are not one of the world's biggest rock bands.
Second is that if Martin is the world's embassador for rock, how wimpy is rock 'n' roll? Rolling Stone knows it. The title of the article is "The Jesus of Uncool."
Coldplay is the pinnacle of rock's needy modern lifeblood. There's a reason for that scene in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" where one character tells another, "Do you know how I know you're gay? You like Coldplay." The British quartet makes nice, inoffensive alt-rock, but musically, they're the embodiment of rock's trendy sniveling sissy-dom. They don't wear the pants.
For further proof, sample Death Cab for Cutie's latest platter, Narrow Stairs, which carries the relentlessly insecure "You Can Do Better Than Me." "But I can't do better than you," bemoans Death Cab's Ben Gibbard as if he needed to further affix the lack of self-confidence.
Even Weezer, a group who's made a career out of being wimps, is riding high on the Billboard charts right now because of "Pork and Beans," a track which doggedly insists it has machismo: "I'm-a do the things that I wanna do / I ain't got a thing to prove to you ... I'm finally dandy with the me inside / One look in the mirror and I'm tickled pink / I don't give a hoot about what you think." Dandy? Tickled pink? I'm not even gonna go there.
Additionally, if Cuomo has to tell us he don't care what anyone thinks, the only person he's trying to convince is himself.
I suppose this is an unfair criticism because Coldplay and their ilk aren't trying to be a bunch of long-haired, hard-rockin', drug-hoovering, bat-chewing animals. Furthermore, if there is a place to get your dysfunction out, it should be in a rock song, not beaten into some poor stranger's face.
But we shouldn't annoint a false idol with Coldplay. They're not as monumental, innovative or talented as another English group: Radiohead.
Coldplay has long been compared to Radiohead. But it's an unfair one.
Case in point: with fans frothing like rabid, Pavlovian dogs for the OK Computer follow up, Radiohead rolled up Kid A and told the music industry to cram it. Frustrating, alienating and challenging, it was as though Radiohead said, "Here. Here's the most inaccessible, difficult, guitarless batch of material we could deliver. Enjoy."
Kid A is a stereogram, one of those pictures where if you look at it long enough, you see something. (If you have some time, check out Marianne Tatom Letts' dissertation on Kid A and concept albums for the University of Texas at Austin.)
For an encore, Radiohead brandished a figurative 50-story-tall middle finger to the record industry last year when they initially issued In Rainbows without a label. That's mighty cunning.
Coldplay, by comparison, has given us lush, inoffensive music. No innovative release-schedule fortitude. No messing with audience expectation. Just charming alt-rock, albeit a little wimpy.
There's nothing wrong with appreciating them for what they are, but let's canonize a group that comfortably wears big boy rock 'n' roll pants.
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