(a) setlist

1. A Head Full of Dreams
2. Yellow
3. Every Teardrop is a Waterfall
4. The Scientist
5. Birds
6. Paradise
7. Always in My Head
8. Princess of China
9. Everglow
10. Clocks
11. Midnight
12. Charlie Brown
13. Hymn For the Weekend
14. Fix You
15. Heroes (David Bowie cover)
16. Viva La Vida
17. Adventure of a Lifetime
18. Trouble (acoustic)
19. God Put a Smile Upon Your Face (acoustic)

Encore:

1. Earth Angel (The Penguins cover) (performed with Michael J. Fox)
2. Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry cover) (performed with Michael J. Fox)
3. A Sky Full of Stars
4. Up & Up

(b) highlights

• seeing Coldplay for the first time was pretty cool, I guess!
• ummmmm, Michael J. Fox came out and played two songs from one of the greatest movies of all time, Back to the Future, and apparently some people weren’t crying which is insane to me because I was sobbing
• “Trouble”!!! “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face”!!! “Yellow”!!! “The Scientist”!!! Basically anything released before X&Y!!!!
• seeing “Up & Up” was pretty cool, considering it’s my favorite track from Coldplay’s newest album, Adventure of a Lifetime (I swear that Noel Gallagher, who plays guitar on it, has something to do with it)
• getting to experience a literal stadium of people singing along to a song like “Fix You” really is something you treasure forever, even if it’s a bit overly packaged up and wrapped in an over-produced bow; it’s still a beautiful song

(c) lowlights

• ironically, a lowlight was literally all the light-up bracelets Coldplay is known for having at their shows; I get that they’re supposed to add something to the experience and that they “look cool” when all of them light up accordingly, but I personally found them really distracting; the best songs I found where ones where the bracelets weren’t implemented at all
• why does Chris Martin have to be so annoying? it’s like – I know that he’s honestly probably not a bad dude, but there’s this strange self-righteousness about him that puts me over the edge. oh and he dresses like he shops at a store where Lisa Frank somehow sponsored clothing for grown men
• getting to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey from NYC is literal. hell. on. earth.

(d) overall thoughts

I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about Coldplay that can basically be brought down to this: I think their first two albums, Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head, are mindblowingly incredible records, and 75% of everything else they’ve put out is garbage. Now, I know that’s not really fair and maybe it’s not even true, but it feels real to me. To me, X&Y was ultimately a very disappointing album that included a couple of good tracks – “Talk” and “Fix You.” I hated Viva La Vida when it came out, but grew to really like about half the record a few years later. I thought Mylo Xylophone (I know it’s not called that but I swear I can’t ever remember the real name so I just call it that and honestly, does anyone actually care? no.) was overwhelmingly pop trash, but I could allow myself to relent to it and even enjoy about half of it. I thought their “stripped back” and “underproduced” album Ghost Stories was absolutely dull and worked like a sleeping pill, and believe their newest Adventure of a Lifetime is a midlife crisis album with little soul or heart save one or two songs.

All of that may seem harsh and confusing considering I went all the way to New Jersey to see them in a stadium, but the truth is this: I want to like Coldplay. I want them to win me over and blow me away. But they just don’t, in terms of recent album releases. So, I decided to give them a chance and see them live. And did they blow me away? No. Were they totally terrible? No. Do I still feel just as confused about them as before? Yeah, pretty much.

The moments I’ll remember most from the performance are Michael J. Fox joining the band to perform “Earth Angel” and “Johnny B. Goode,” and not just because Back to the Future is one of my favorite movies ever. I definitely won’t forget how everyone was singing along to “Yellow” and “Fix You,” and how it felt like everything in the entire stadium had stopped when the band played “Trouble” on a small side stage, only with acoustic guitars to accompany them. I’ll even remember everyone singing the refrain of “Up & Up” as the night came to a close. And I want to remember all those moments, because they were beautiful.

But you know what I wish I could forget about that night? I wish I could forget about the fact that fireworks – real fireworks, not just spark displays – went off four times during the performance. Four. I wish I could forget how those damn light-up bracelets made everyone scream with joy as if no one had ever seen shiny lights before in their lives. I wish I could forget about the gimmicks of the performance because, to be honest, they all felt a bit cheap despite the fact that they were clearly some display of overcompensation I’ll never understand. Truly, one of my favorite parts of the night was during “Yellow” – and that song isn’t even one of my favorite Coldplay tracks or anything. I mean, it is pretty great and definitely a classic, but it affected me so much because it was the first song without any damn fireworks or flashing lights or some big whole display. It was literally just the band playing their song on a stage. That’s all. That might not be what people want when they pay to see an internationally renowned band at a 60,000+ person stadium, but maybe that’s just me. Maybe I was never meant to really see Coldplay in that setting because the Coldplay I used to love doesn’t exist anymore. And that’s okay! Because, despite all those flashing lights (“all those lights and all that sound,” ughhhh), the beautiful moments were still wonderful in their own right and that’s something strong enough to want to remember.

Bottom line: Seeing Coldplay didn’t really solve my conflicted feelings about them, but more settled the fact that human beings seem to really, really like flashing lights. Despite that, Michael J. Fox and Back to the Future reenactments aren’t something I could turn down and neither are Coldplay songs written before 2005.

Note: These pictures are either taken with my Canon Rebel XS, a Galaxy s5, or through a monocular….because I was literally sitting in the rafters, don’t judge.