Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends by Coldplay
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, often referred to as simply Viva la Vida is the fourth studio album by British rock band Coldplay, released on 11 June 2008 on Parlophone. The album was named after a Spanish phrase that translates in English as "long live life". Lyrically, the album contains references to love, life, death, and war. Recording sessions for the album took place during June 2007 to April 2008 and featured production by Jon Hopkins, Rik Simpson, Markus Dravs and Brian Eno. The album was the first to be produced by the latter. The band forced themselves to explore experimental styles, as Eno required every song on the album to sound different, and expanded their musical interests while recording Viva la Vida. The band wanted to make the album shorter than 42 minutes. As a result, the album is longer than the length they intended. Development of the album delayed the release date several times. Viva la Vida was both a critical and commercial success. Five singles have been released in promotion of the album; "Violet Hill" and "Viva la Vida" in May 2008, "Lovers in Japan" and "Lost!" in November 2008, and "Strawberry Swing" in September 2009. "Viva la Vida" became the band's first song to reach number one in both the United States and the United Kingdom. It won Best Rock Album at the 2009 Grammy Awards and was also nominated for Album of the Year. It was the best selling album of 2008. To date, the album has sold more than 10 million copies. Viva la Vida was re-released on 25 November 2008 in a deluxe edition containing the original album and the Prospekt's March EP.
<i>Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends</i> is the sound of Coldplay starting over. A gruelling tour to support their third album <i>X&Y</i> (2005), the recording of which was also an arduous process for the quartet, had ended with the British rock giants wondering whether they should call it a day. Instead, Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman and Will Champion completely reinvented themselves. This was a total creative overhaul. Before they even began thinking about music, first they had to recalibrate their setup. They bought and renovated a building in North London and turned it into Coldplay HQ. Christened The Bakery in a nod to its former use, here Coldplay could write, record, rehearse, discuss artwork ideas and hang out. With a studio on one level and their management offices on another, the band now had their own base from which to operate. Away from prying eyes, a reimagining could take place. It helped that their “fifth member” Phil Harvey, a long-term sounding board who had sat out the making of <i>X&Y</i>, was back on board as the band’s creative director. Even more crucial to <i>Viva la Vida…</i>’s artistic process was the inclusion of Brian Eno on co-production duties. The former Roxy Music man and Bowie collaborator brought an experimental approach to album sessions and helped Coldplay redefine what a stadium-rock record could be just as he had done with U2 two decades earlier. Eno encouraged a spirit of collaboration between band members and took them out of their comfort zones. It made for an extraordinary album, one where Coldplay ditched the idea that bigger and more bombastic was the only way to go for a group of their stature. There are exhilarating sing-alongs on <i>Viva la Vida…</i>—can you get more exhilarating than the outro to the title track?—and there are indelible, irresistible melodies, but there is a delicacy too, a confidence to let these songs breathe. To that end, <i>Viva la Vida…</i> often sounds like a Coldplay we hadn’t heard before. On the cosmic crash of instrumental opener “Life in Technicolour”, the Afropop and highlife-indebted sway of “Strawberry Swing” (a song later covered by Frank Ocean) or the airy art rock of “Lovers in Japan”, here was a band rejuvenated. Released in June 2008, <i>Viva la Vida…</i> went on to sell over 11 million copies, its freedom of expression giving Coldplay the belief to try anything going forward. That Coldplay went on to be a band who could collaborate with both Noel Gallagher and Beyoncé, both Femi Kuti and BTS, can be traced back here. Making <i>Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends</i> taught Coldplay that anything was possible.
