So they enlisted Brian Eno, a producer whose legendary reputation partially rested in his ability to help an artist forge new textural and aesthetic backdrops for their work. X&Y was still wildly successful, but even the band appeared to recognize that its bloated sheen had taken the original Coldplay template to its logical end point and, perhaps, a point of diminishing returns. Coldplay, so it went, were the poster-boys for a strain of lame, bloodless modern rock. There were still good moments - “Speed Of Sound” was an endearing (and enduring) re-write of “Clocks” the Kraftwerk-sampling “Talk” was addicting - but material like the album’s huge hit “Fix You” gave their critics the exact ammunition they’d been looking for. The subtle hints of something weirder that lingered at the edges of Parachutes and A Rush Of Blood To The Head, the element that allowed Coldplay to straddle the worlds of murky post-Britpop atmospheric rock and more straight-up mainstream pop, were mostly brushed away for their polished and often sappy third effort. In many ways, it was one of those collections where a band starts to sound exactly like everyone’s most basic idea of them. In 2005, Coldplay released their third album, X&Y.
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