Salon: Coldplay Sucks!

Ok, Salon isn't saying Coldplay sucks, at least not directly (and without some of the New York Times' vitriolic edge in their recent takedown of the group) , but they do manage to call them "weird" in their introductory paragraph and make a pretty strong case for the strangeness that goes on between Coldplay frontman and British Prime Minister tony Blair. Pretty quickly, they get around to calling Martin's elbow-rubbing with Blair barf worthy."

Chris Martin of Coldplay is morphing into Tony Blair of 10 Downing Street. And the rock-politics love-fest imagined above is a reality over here. Martin really did send a hand-written note to Blair, via a journalist, that said: "Dear Mr Blair, My name is Chris; I am the singer in a band called Coldplay ... I think all the stuff you're doing this year in terms of trying to sort the whole place out is BRILLIANT. The Make Poverty History campaign that you're behind is not just a slogan, it's a real possibility, and myself and most of my friends feel like you're one of the only politicians on the world stage who actually wants to achieve it." Martin also offered Blair guitar lessons and wrote down his cell number and, sure enough, he received a call from Blair's people a few days later."

In an article that can't quite bring itself to deliver an Armond White style all-out rail against the band, Salon calls the group "bland" and "middle of the road," saying the band is "neither rock nor experimental." It's almost as if writer Brenden O'Neill is annoyed that Coldplay isn't any worse a group than it is.

The blanding of British rock has happened before... But the punks came along in '76 and told the Prog Rockers to fuck off. Surely there is another Johnny Rotten or Sid Vicious out there, watching the rise of Coldplay, Keane, Radiohead and the rest with great unease and plotting to do something about it?

It's funny. Music critics, many of whom spend vast amounts of time dropping virulent word bombs about the state of the music industry*, find something that's mildly acceptable and get annoyed that it doesn't fit into their categories of horrid, miserable crap or brilliant, world-changing, messianic brilliance. Mediocrity is like critic kryptonite.

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*With good reason, for the mainstream music industry is truly the pits