We’re slowly coming to an end of the series and the rainy weather has me a little down but definitely not out. With that being said, we’ll be looking at another new comer band to the series.
Today, Coldplay makes their first appearance of the series with the 2000 song Yellow from their debut studio album Parachutes.
Yellow is the fifth song off of the album, and is arguably the biggest hit.
On the 2000 to 2001 charts, Yellow had one number appearance on the Iceland Top 40. In addition to that, the song hit number four in both Scotland and the UK, number two on the U.S. Adult Alternative chart, and number five on the Australian chart.
Twenty one years later, Yellow found a spot as high as thirteen on the U.S. Hot Rock and Alternative Chart.
Yellow earned triple platinum in the UK, double platinum in Italy, platinum in both Australia and Portugal, and gold in Denmark and America.
The song is actually very beautiful. The way that the soft electric guitar hits the ear coupled with a light and consistent drum beat gives me goosebumps. I can’t really explain why, but it just does.
I believe that another reason that the song has this effect is that Chris Martins voice pairs perfectly with the way the instruments work throughout. Whether it’s when the drums and guitar work in unison or when the guitar just plays very lightly at the end of the song, Martin kills it.
The background behind the writing of Yellow is actually pretty interesting.
The group wrote the song in the Rockfield Quadrangle studio in South Wales where a decent chunk of Parachutes was written and recorded. On the night the band completed the recording of Shiver, they left the studio to take a break.
As they were walking out, one of the bands members noted that the stars looked beautiful. After seeing this sight, Chris Martin was drawn to writing a song about it and the melody popped into his head.
What I find funniest about this song is that Martin didn’t really take the recording of the song seriously. He sang the song in “his worst Neil Young impersonation voice” and because of this, the initial tempo of the song was slower like a Neil Young song.
It wasn’t until later in the recording process that guitarist Jonny Buckland upped the pace and turned Yellow into the song it is today.
Another wrinkle about Yellow that many people don’t know about is that the “yellow” in the song doesn’t mean anything.
When Martin was composing the song he was looking for words to fit and he locked eyes with the yellow pages and thought that the word yellow would work. This goes the same for "Look at the stars". Guitarist Guy Berryman just through it out as when the band was spitballing ideas.
In an interview with Howard Stern in 2011, Martin said that the word the "yellow" has absolutely no meaning whatsoever and while writing the rest of the song, attempted to change "yellow" to something else since every lyric before yellow made no sense but in the end the word "yellow" just sounded right.
It’s wild how big of a hit Yellow has become and it was just slapped together through jokes and spitballing. Wild.