Parachutes (Coldplay album)
Parachutes is the debut studio album by the British rock band Coldplay. It was released on 10 July 2000 by Parlophone in the United Kingdom and on 7 November 2000 by Nettwerk in the United States. Ken Nelson and the band co-produced all songs except "High Speed", which was produced by Chris Allison alone. Parachutes spawned four singles: "Shiver", "Yellow", "Trouble" and "Don't Panic", the latter being limited to Europe. "Sparks" gained notability in the 2020s after going viral on video platform TikTok. In support of the album, Coldplay embarked on the Parachutes Tour.
The album was a commercial success and was met with positive reviews from critics. Upon release, it quickly reached number one in the United Kingdom and has since been certified 9× Platinum. In the United States, the album peaked at number 51 on the Billboard 200 and eventually was certified double platinum. It won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 2002, the British Album of the Year award at the 2001 Brit Awards, and many other accolades. Parachutes is also the 22nd-best-selling album of the 21st century in the United Kingdom., it has sold over 17 million copies worldwide.
Recording and production
The band began production on Parachutes in late 1999, after producing and releasing The Blue Room EP with British record producer Chris Allison. Allison was asked to assist with production, and the band's musical direction, which was desired by both the band & the A&R department. Production started with the track 'High Speed', which was part of the EP and was later re-released as a part of Parachutes. Allison describes 'High Speed' as thus: 'You'll notice it is quite a bit different to the other tracks, because there are other sounds going on in it: we wanted to mix a soundscape in with the classic rock sound on that particular track. I thought 'High Speed' was a really good marriage between the classic rock sound and the new sound that was developing out of it, something that was more atmospheric'. Seven tracks in all were recorded during the sessions at Orinoco studios in London, with three of them ending up on The Blue Room EP.The band then took a lengthy break to compose more tracks for Parachutes. A few months later, it was arranged that Allison and the band meet at a rehearsal room to finally begin production on the band's debut album. "They started up playing in the rehearsal room and they really weren't together at all. And I was very honest with them, I just sort of said 'Look, this simply isn't good enough'". Allison adds, "The interesting, the most significant thing that did occur out of the fact that we didn't end up starting the album on that day of the rehearsal was that Chris Martin had not written "Yellow" by that time".
A couple of months later, British record producer Ken Nelson was chosen, producing all but one song on Parachutes. He was introduced to Coldplay by his manager Pete Byrne. Nelson has claimed that, as soon as he heard vocalist Chris Martin's voice on the song "Bigger Stronger", he "realised that he was something special". Nelson was offered the job while Coldplay were performing in Liverpool with English indie rock band Gomez.
Coldplay initially planned to record Parachutes in the space of two weeks. However, tours and other live performances caused the recording to spread out between November 1999 and May 2000. The band began work on the album at Rockfield Studios in Wales, continuing with sessions at Liverpool's Parr Street Studios. The band worked in three studio rooms at Parr Street, mostly in the project studio which producer Ken Nelson describes as "basically a demo room". The Chris Allison-produced track "High Speed" was also included on the album, and originates from earlier sessions at Orinoco Studios in London. The album was mixed by American engineer Michael Brauer in New York. Coldplay's record label, Parlophone, had originally intended to use a mixing engineer for the tracks they picked as singles, but eventually hired Brauer to work on all songs on Parachutes except the song "High Speed" which was mixed by Chris Allison.
At the Liverpool concert where he was offered the production job, Nelson had noted that Coldplay's performance was "very very uptight they rushed through the set and it was quite difficult to listen to". Once in the studio Nelson and the band went through each song, learning how to play the piece live and deciding what tempo to play it at in an attempt to get the group to "calm down".
The album's cover features a photograph of a yellow globe taken with a disposable Kodak camera. The globe had been purchased from W H Smith for £10; it was featured in the music videos for "Shiver" and "Don't Panic", and also accompanied the band on their tours. The album was dedicated to drummer Will Champion's mother, Sara Champion, who died of cancer in May 2000, two months before the release of Parachutes.
Music and style
Champion has explained that Nelson's production style was liberating and allowed the band to feel at ease during the recording of Parachutes. The ensuing album was "a record's worth of moody and atmospheric tunes". As a nod to the moods created by the album, Champion has compared the song lyrics to the 1972 song "Perfect Day" by American rock singer-songwriter Lou Reed, stating that the "lyrics are beautiful and they're really, really happy, but the music is really, really sad. It's that kind of thing, where you can create moods through the music and lyrics".Parachutes was recognised to have an alternative rock, indie rock, and post-Britpop, with some stylistic comparisons being made to contemporaries such as Radiohead and Travis. In fact, a few critics have suggested that the album's commercial success was due in part to a portion of Radiohead's audience being alienated by the band's experimental and more electronic-influenced Kid A album.
Release and promotion
Parachutes was first released on 10 July 2000 by Parlophone in the United Kingdom, which was part of EMI. For international marketing, the company followed a process where artists were picked by either Virgin, Manhattan or Capitol in the United States, not having their albums issued otherwise. All three labels rejected Coldplay, driving them to sign with Nettwerk. The record was made available on 7 November 2000 and radio stations were served to "Yellow" in January 2001. Capitol took over distribution six months later.The album was blocked from release in China due to "inflammatory political content". Government officials singled out "Spies" as the prime offender. In 2020, Coldplay released a 20th anniversary edition of Parachutes in transparent yellow vinyl. Its main version has 10 tracks, with "Everything's Not Lost" being accompanied by a hidden segment called "Life Is for Living".
Japanese pressings include the songs "Careful Where You Stand" and "For You", which were originally released as the B-sides of "Shiver". The hidden portion is located at the pre-gap of track 11. Four singles were released in total: "Shiver", "Yellow", "Trouble" and "Don't Panic". Upon the release of "Trouble", Coldplay abandoned their initial plan of releasing "Don't Panic", since they deemed three singles were enough for an album. However, a number of CDs were made available in select European countries.
Critical reception
Reviews
Parachutes was released to generally favorable reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 72, based on 20 reviews. In a contemporary review of the album, Michael Hubbard of musicOMH called it "an album of remarkable depth, especially when one considers the youthful ages of the band members". Siobhan Grogan of NME stated that "all told, it's incredible this is a debut album" and concluded that "accomplished, yet subtle, it works perfectly as a whole in a way all the production skills in the world couldn't replicate". Melody Maker hailed Parachutes as a "masterpiece" and "a defining musical statement of 2000", while James Oldham of Uncut felt that the album "more than justifies the plaudits heaped upon by the weekly music press". The Guardian described the album as "one of the year's most uplifting albums", adding that it features "elegant songs, classic guitars and gorgeous singing".While noting that Parachutes "brings nothing new to the table" and that its "musical reference points are immediately recognizable and difficult to overlook", Billboard stated that the band "seems talented enough to transcend this early identity crisis". Matt Diehl of Rolling Stone opined that the album "ultimately rises above its influences to become a work of real transcendence". In a retrospective write-up, MacKenzie Wilson of AllMusic commented that Parachutes introduced the band as "young musicians still honing their sweet harmonies", adding that the album "deserved the accolades it received because it followed the general rule when introducing decent pop songs: keep the emotion genuine and real".
In a less-enthusiastic review, Pitchfork called the album "harmless and pretty... nothing else". Barry Walters, writing in The Village Voice, similarly writes that "there's little on Parachutes that demands attention or punctures the pensive spell, and, unlike Travis's, Coldplay's hooks are slight". In his Consumer Guide column for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau selected "Yellow" and "Don't Panic" as "choice cuts", indicating good songs on "an album that isn't worth your time or money". Setareh Yousefi of Stylus Magazine felt that "the finer moments of Parachutes are blended with some boring sappy songs", with Martin's "powerful voice" ultimately being "in many ways wasted on songs that are alright but not bewildering".