If you go to college out of state and are lucky enough to have two parents you love very much, you also probably know the complicated feelings that swim through your psyche at the end of a stay at the house you grew up in as you prepare to leave for your adopted city. These are vulnerable moments, and it’s not something that gets any easier with repetition. My flight left at three in the afternoon, I was fully packed by one, the remaining empty hours were spent absorbing every little bit I could of my nascent Southern Californian home.
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My Dad had a Pandora stream plodding through dozens of mid-‘00s alt-rock galvanizers—Snow Patrol, Five For Fighting, Switchfoot, stuff that’s colored the backgrounds of our lives. Say what you will about these bands, but they were certainly never afraid to aim for the heart, and there’s something to be said for sitting on your old bed, listening to old songs, hours before you’re about to be bluntly reminded of how much of an adult you are.30 minutes before leaving, I was standing in the kitchen, my Dad was occupying himself with something outside. The radio turned over to Coldplay’s “Fix You.” You know, the one that starts really quiet and gets really loud, the one that kinda sounds like “Bad Religion,” the one that everyone points to when they want to make fun of Coldplay—it’s like the ultimate example of bloated pop-rock purgatory, it’s the lamest song ever, it’s beguiling to think people actually get moved by this. “When you get what you want, but not what you need,” the jokes practically write themselves. I rolled my eyes and poured myself a glass of water, but when the pianos came in I felt a twang of something deep inside me. I felt my head get hot. I closed my eyes, “Oh my God, this can’t be actually happening.” Yes, it was. I took a deep breath, but I had no chance of escaping. By the second verse, “Fix You” had wrapped me up. I had completely, undeniably succumbed.Let’s be clear: Coldplay made me cry. Well, not like weep, but they did force me to wipe my eyes. On August 14th, 2012 Coldplay forced me to lay down in my childhood bed so I could get my act together before I was forced to face the world again. “Fix You,” a song I have spent most of my life feeling thoroughly superior to, ruthlessly brought me to my knees. It was a humbling experience to say the least. Suddenly, I was on the same pages as the millions of people who don’t need an asterisk to like Coldplay. They won, I lost. My high-horse was killed and buried at a Dave Matthews show.
To be fair, I didn’t exactly have my defenses up. It’s hard to hold yourself together when you’re on the brink of abandoning an infinite well of love, acceptance, and the crystallized scenery of youthful ambivalence. Yes, I’m projecting here, but it’s not exactly an everyday thing. I just wasn’t in the right state of mind to be cynical about anything, which meant a giant anthem of general, universal pathos plucked me right out of my comfort zone. I can honestly say I will never hear “Fix You” the same way ever again, perhaps because it is now irreparably tied to the dorkiest musical experience of my life. But it also makes me think of Coldplay, as both a band and a philosophy in a completely different way. If the endless distance I’ve put between myself and overwrought radio-rock could be comprehensively destroyed by one song in a particularly emotional respite, then there’s no way it can be irrelevant art. I usually keep my hoity-toity posture pretty rock-solid, but the one moment I’m off-guard, Coldplay totally bulldozed my brain. Something about that seems uncommonly substantial to me. Why did I feel that “Fix You” deserved to be kept at arm’s length? It’s a line of thinking that can lead to ethical dilemmas; why do I try my hardest not to feel this way about this song, when the majority of the world’s population doesn’t even let such a worthless consideration cross their mind? The mainstream goes with their heart, I was trained to go with my brain, and sometimes that seems like a pretty stupid idea.I’m not saying “Fix You” is a great song or anything, but it is a little weird how we shit on it for being an enormous, bloviating emotional statement. Are we supposed to be too cool for enormous, bloviating emotional statements? We have this stigma that if you buy into a band like Coldplay, you somehow fell for it, which can look pretty childish. I mean, we all seem to think Funeral is a pretty good record; are we falling for that too? Maybe “Rebellion (Lies)” is more elegant, but the idea of deliberating the “validity” of grandiose, evocative material is a pretty dark path. Who knows, maybe there is something intrinsically inferior about “Fix You,” but that doesn’t change how something woefully unhip can still blow us up from time to time. If we, the listener, are letting our barriers get in the way of our emotional resonance, then we probably need to change our attitude. It’d certainly make us a happier people.@luke_winkie
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