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Music

Everything's Not Lost: Growing up with Coldplay at the Beacon Theater

We went to #ColdplayBeacon and reflected on getting older as a Coldplay fan.

The 50-year-old couple I met last night at the Beacon Theater on New York's Upper West Side, who were celebrating the wife's birthday, certainly would never forget this Coldplay show, the husband's surprise gift. Noah, the 25-year-old Pittsburgh native sitting next to me who lamented not getting to do much in the way of cultural activities since he moved to the city eight months ago, wasn't going to forget it: He even collected some of the confetti Coldplay had shot out afterward, to go with the confetti he'd collected on the Viva La Vida tour. Thomas, the 18-year-old college freshman who'd taken the nine-hour train ride from Pittsburgh (no relation to Noah) just to see this concert, would definitely not motherfucking forget it. He was wearing his light-up wristband and T-shirt from the Mylo Xyloto tour. This was his shit. The guy in the Hawaiian shirt dancing in the aisle and making finger guns at everyone during the quiet new songs nobody knew, who looked like he was in his 60s and quite possibly off the molly water, might end up with little in the way of memories from the night, but nobody was forgetting him.

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I'll remember Coldplay, but you might have already guessed that. Coldplay is a band that gives more the more unequivocally you buy into them, and, over the last week or so, I've bought into them hard, again. Covering Coldplay's recent promotional stunt of hiding handwritten lyrics in libraries around the world with breathless excitement and jokey enthusiasm, I found myself thinking about the band a lot. I listened to their new single with Avicii, “A Sky Full of Stars,” a lot. I reflected on my own experiences with Coldplay—the unrequited high school crush on the girl who got me into the band, the time I saw the X/Y tour and they blew my mind by letting out a million yellow balloons for “Yellow,” the time when I was recovering from malaria and finally felt healthy enough to sit around on a rooftop looking at the stars and listening to “The Scientist” with some friends, the period when the Jay Z/Coldplay mash-up mixtape was the best thing ever—and there were a lot of them.

Like everyone else who saw the Beacon Theater show—their first in support of their new album Ghost Stories—I was having the time of my life. There is no way to appreciate Coldplay that is too lame or cliché. In fact, you're better off being lame and cliché because you're missing the point of Coldplay if you're busy trying to be cool and pick it apart. When I got to the theater, I started taking pictures of the marquee, which is the kind of thing I might normally try to do a little surreptitiously, at the risk of looking like too eager a fan. Fortunately, with Coldplay, there is no such thing, especially if you're rolling solo, just happy to be there, like I was. Everyone else was taking pictures, too. I saw an older couple take a picture of the marquee on their iPad and walk away. They weren't even going to the show; they just really liked idea of it, apparently. When I had the chance to take pictures of anything with the words Coldplay on it, I took that chance. I killed my phone battery taking Vines. And when I had the option to get the night's signature Ghost Stories cocktail, I got the cocktail. Every turn up is a waterfall.

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I was thrilled by the stories of the other fans I talked to. Everything seemed so fucking magical. I felt like we had all made it, together. During “God Put A Smile Upon Your Face,” I literally thought, “Coldplay rocks!” And when they shot confetti into the air while playing “A Sky Full of Stars”? I had never been more convinced that the sky was full of stars.

What I'm dancing around here is the fact that the audience for a Coldplay show in 2014—or at least this admittedly expensive, instant sellout Coldplay show—was pretty old, the fact that I was particularly aware of the feeling of growing up as a music fan. I'd put the average age at around 35, possibly 40. At first, the only people I saw who fell under that age cap were kids with their parents. I'm not saying that the 16-34 demographic was absent, but there were definitely way more balding dudes in suit jackets than at any show I've been at in a while—maybe ever. Andrew helpfully told me that, among his peers, “It's almost cool not to like it.” Which is exactly the point.

Enjoying Coldplay in 2014 is an act of coming to terms with getting older, of acknowledging that you're probably not going to be cool forever—if you ever were to begin with. You have to be very earnest or maybe a little clueless to love Coldplay. And that's okay! Coldplay's tent is a big tent, and all the dorks, all the out-of-touch 40-year-olds, all the rich guys whose iPhones are loaded with one AC/DC Pandora station who just want to impress the women they've brought on dates, all the people from marketing who just want to blow some steam off, are welcome. And they're probably huge fans. Everyone is a little bit a fan of Coldplay. They are a band that you either love, enjoy, or find completely unremarkable. No one really hates Coldplay because there's nothing abrasive enough about them to hate, unless it's their complete lack of abrasiveness. But there's a lot to love because Coldplay get to the heart of everything that is real and true, and they do so in the most direct and least jarring way possible.

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Coldplay's songs have a unique kind of longevity: Those guitar parts probably aren't going to be part of the historical record when it comes to remembering the music of the 2000s, but old hits from the catalog feel like they've settled a little and matured. During last night’s rendition of “Fix You,” the band’s total knock-down, drag-out saccharine inspirational ballad, I sang along like Chris Martin and I were the only two people in the world. Martin had, for some reason, dedicated the song to Mick Jagger. And man, I felt for Mick Jagger. I felt for everyone in the room. I felt for everyone outside of the room. That song is like exhibit A in corny Coldplay arguments, but it slays live. I had a similar reaction to “Til Kingdom Come,” a Johnny Cash tribute deep cut from XY that I used to listen to before falling asleep in high school because I was a total sap. I hadn't thought about that song in years until I heard it again, and I was back to feeling weirdly out of place and full of hormones, crushing unrequitedly. Does Coldplay make less sense as you get older and more concerned with being cool? Does it make more sense as you get even older than that and less concerned with being cool? Coldplay was my entry point to a lot of music and a lot of feelings, and, who knows, it could be my exit point. Lights will guide you home, indeed.

My pal Andrew was three years old when his favorite Coldplay album, Parachutes, came out and his parents introduced him to it. Coldplay is literally a theme throughout his entire life. My new buddy Noah, like me, was 15 when he found out about Coldplay and they became his favorite band. No doubt some of that audience of 40-year-olds were once hip 25-year-olds listening to this cool British band that was going to be the next Radiohead. And now, here we are in the year 2014 and Coldplay is growing older, but so are we. Coldplay were polished last night, but they weren't particularly theatrical, and Chris Martin poked fun at it, joking that “if only we had the courage to dress in something other than black we might be as successful as One Direction.” I'm curious how the new material, which went over unconvincingly live but sounds fascinating (of what's been released so far) on record, will evolve. Is it actually good? Will it get good? Will people love it? Will people just accept it? Is that a ridiculous thing to worry about? We want music, and so it might as well be Coldplay's music. And we might as well love it deeply—although if we just want to love it a little bit because we just like the idea of loving music, that's okay, too.

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Check out the full #ColdplayBeacon playlist (minus the unreleased tracks, obviously) below:

Kyle Kramer's favorite Coldplay song is "Amsterdam" because he's feeling feelings. He's on Twitter - @KyleKramer

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