A Rush of Blood to the Head" is the second album by UK indie rock outfit Coldplay. The album came out in 2002 meaning next year will be the albums 20th anniversary. Since bands these days seem to celebrate an album, they made every year you do wonder if Coldplay will follow suit with arguably one of the best albums in their catalogue. Which is saying a lot. They are still going strong in 2021 having released 8 studio albums and toured the world many, many times over. They are in the process of getting the new album ready for action with the single "Higher Power" already out in the world.
But "A Rush of Blood to the Head" will always be a special album for me. I would have been 18 when it came out and while I liked their debut album "Parachutes". "Rush of the Blood" was the album that really made me appreciate Coldplay and started a journey which would be one of the few bands I would really follow from early 2000s right through to present day. This was for various reasons, several of the bands I was into back then split up after a few albums. Some I felt the quality of their material diminished over time. Also, my music taste has changed quite a bit over the years. But Coldplay has always been a mainstay for me, and "Rush of Blood" was one of the reasons why.
The album starts off with "Polotik" with Chirs Martin on piano. But this is far from a piano ballad. The intro will go right through you. It’s hard hitting, upbeat and such a great way to start the album. But there is a beautiful moment in this song as well where there is a softer section during the bridge where Martin sings "And give me love over, love over this". Such a tender moment where Martin hits the spot vocally, perfectly. This is followed by "In my place" which was the lead single off the album. I always thought, although it was an ok song. This was for me, the weakest song on the album. It just felt so ordinary and nothing special about it. Hearing it live it is better as it is a good sing along song that everyone knows the words to.
Third track is the title track "God put a smile upon my face". This is an unbelievably good feel-good track. From the intro of the track with the acoustic guitar, then when Martin comes in with "Where do we go nobody knows". Then Buckland comes in with the electric guitar. It feels like the album is riding of a high wave really from the outset. Until fourth track "The Scientist" comes along and slows things right down. This is a track which still gets played live today. The video for this is infamous as it starts off you see Martin and the girl he is with have been involved in a car crash and the video basically in rewind mode throughout showing you what happened in reverse. A beautiful track.
Track 5 is "Clocks" which turns things up a notch again. This is an absolute banger which I closely compared to "Polotik" as it’s a piano stomper too. Both great tracks but I think "Clocks" edges it for me. The lights when you see "Clocks" live transform the song. "Daylight" continues the upbeat trend, but I think is the first track up until this point you could really call an album track rather than a single. As I think tracks 1-5 all had some sort of mainstay in either live sets or being released as singles. But "Daylight" does deserve a bit of love too because I think if another band wrote this song, they would have released it as a single. It's catchy and has a great chorus.
Tracks 7 and 8 I always feel go together so well and I did used to spend a lot of time focusing on these songs in the years after the album’s release. These were "Green eyes" and "Warning sign". These aren't your big anthems which will have people singing at the top of their lungs. They are almost like the modest, humble tracks on the album. "Green eyes" is an acoustic number which chirps away nicely. "Warning Sign" has some amazing lyrics which are so powerful as Martin sings "That you were an island, and I passed you by, And you were an island to discover". I find Martin's lyrics so imaginative and relatable and that is up there with my favourites of his.
9th track "A Whisper" I would pair off with "Daylight". Back to the upbeat tracks and feel-good moments of the album. The penultimate track is the title track, "A rush of blood to the head" is also the longest track on the album sitting at 5 minutes 51 seconds. Surprisingly though there are 6 tracks on the album that are longer than 5 minutes which I never realised. "Rush of blood" though as Martin once again takes us through a lyrical masterclass where your taken along the journey in such a magical song. Lines like "I'm gonna buy a gun and start a war, if you can tell me something worth fighting for". It's a slower moving song which has some nice building moments moving the song into epic status.
But how do you top the title track and close out an album? Well you write a song called "Amsterdam". This is one of favourite Coldplay tracks of all time and would probably get in my top 10 tracks by any artist. I always thought this track didn't get enough love. It's a track which has disappeared from Coldplay's setlists really from when they toured this album. It wasn't until I was watching a Rick Beato video recently where he dissected this track where I found someone that appreciates this track as much as I do. It is a slow piano ballad where the structure of the song and change in tempo during it makes it just so, so good.
The fact that I have only really criticised one track and I would say I did that lightly shows just how good I think this album is and I really feel it has stood the test of time and become an all-time classic album. Not every album Coldplay has done has hit that mark since. They have certainly written individual songs which are on the same level but as an album it is hard to beat.
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