Coldplay have always been a divisive band, one of those who for some reason it’s cool to dislike them. I’m not sure if I’ve fallen either side of the debate, although their debut album Parachutes got me through some difficult times, so does have my esteem. I haven’t really thought about Coldplay for a while, but two things in the news recently have made me think about what this band is doing and where they’re headed.

The first was an item in the news about their new tour - a so-called eco-friendly world tour. The news piece I read talked of the expectations the band had of a backlash against their mode of transportation, given that they’re trying to promote a more green way to do a tour. In fact, they had said they wouldn’t go back on tour until they could figure out a better way of doing it for the planet.

This time they’re using kinetic flooring, so when the band tell the crowd to jump, they really need them to do to help power the concert. That sounds great. And they’re planting a tree for every ticket sold, which is also a nice idea. The flying is a problem though, Chris Martin says: “The people that give us backlash for that kind of thing, for flying, they’re right. So we don’t have any argument against that. We could stay at home and that may be better. But we want to tour and we want to meet people and connect with people - so try and do it in the cleanest way possible.”

I don’t know the logistics of doing this tour, but I feel like there are some things you could do. Take a boat to a country/continent and focus there for a bit, before having a gap while you more cleanly travel somewhere else. But time is money and perhaps that doesn’t work. Ultimately doing anything is better than doing nothing, and raising awareness is always a good thing, I’m just not sure kinetic flooring alone is going to solve the problem.

Meanwhile, the second thing Coldplay have done recently is release an album, which you would expect from an active band. It’s their second consecutive album, though, that I am not able to listen to for my website album project, because some of the songs have symbols or alternative characters in their titles. My blog doesn’t want to know, and therefore I’m not listening to the new stuff. Boo. More than just not being able to blog it though, there are other problems.

Granted, that’s not ALL Coldplay’s fault. This Voice Only music plan is not going to work and everyone seems to know that but Apple. How long before it quietly disappears in a subscription revamp?