Music / Moon Music

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Moon Music is the tenth studio album by English Alternative Rock band Coldplay, released in 4 October 2024 under Parlophone Records, being the second part of the Music of the Spheres saga.

As with the previous album, the album continues the space pop-rock sound of the previous album, with some of the sounds explored ranging from ambient (the title track), post-rock ("🌈" and "ONE WORLD"), soft rock ("ALL MY LOVE"), alternative dance ("AETERNA"), acoustic pop ("JUPiTER"), disco-funk-styled pop rock ("GOOD FEELiNGS"), anthemic alternative rock ("iAAM"), alternative hip-hop ("WE PRAY"), and the electropop-tinged arena rock ("feelslikeimfallinginlove").

The album's collaborations include musicians Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna and Tini ("WE PRAY"), Ayra Starr and guitarist Nile Rodgers from Chic ("GOOD FEELiNGS") and electronic musician Jon Hopkins (the title track). Pop producer Max Martin also returns to work on this album, including a bunch of other producers in the helm like the aforementioned Jon Hopkins, and Brian Eno, who also helped to co-write "ONE WORLD".

The album was preceded by the singles "feelslikefallinginlove" in June and "WE PRAY" in August, and it announced in 17 June of 2024, with a "First Edition" that contains an additional notebook and an extra CD containing demos and voice memos from the album sessions. Reportedly, a good chunk of the album was recorded during the Music of the Spheres Tour, which they were also doing to tour Moon Music. The band also gave fans a chance to listen to the album a few days before its release, with Americans listening to the album in selected independent stores, and the rest of the world in specific theatre venues.

Two days after the album release, the band released the Full Moon deluxe edition of the album, complete with live and alternate versions of the tracks from the album and three tracks that were left in the album's cutting room floor.

Tracklist

1. "MOON MUSiC" (feat. Jon Hopkins) (4:46)
2. "feelslikeimfallinginlove" (3:57)
3. "WE PRAY" (feat. Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna and TINI) (3:53)
4. "JUPiTER" (3:55)
5. "GOOD FEELiNGS" (feat. Ayra Starr and Nile Rodgers) (3:42)
6. "🌈" (6:09)^note Its official title is "ALiEN HiTS / ALiEN RADiO"
7. "iAAM" (3:03)
8. "AETERNA" (4:13)
9. "ALL MY LOVE" (3:42)
10. "ONE WORLD" (6:47)

Full Moon edition

1. "Moon Music – Elodie"^note Instrumental version of the title track post-"Forever Held". (2:46)
2. "feelslikeimfallinginlive" (4:36)
3. "The Karate Kid" (2:55)
4. "We Pray" (Be Our Guest version) (3:53)
5. "Angelsong"^note Extended version of the second half of "🌈" suite. (4:21)
6. "Jupiter" (Single Version)^note Version without the hidden outro. (2:53)
7. "Man in the Moon" (3:54)
8. "I Am a Mountain"^note Piano version. (3:06)
9. "All My Love" (live in Dublin) (4:06)
10. "A Wave" (feat. Jon Hopkins) (2:33)

Moon Tropes:

• all lowercase letters/Portmantitle: "feelslikeimfallinginlove".
• Alliterative Title: Moon Music.
• As the Good Book Says...: "WE PRAY" mentions the "shadow of death" in the first verse, which is a reference to Jeremiah 2:6, with the "shadow of death" itself being one of the lands that God has guided the people to.
• Audience Participation: Unusually, the studio version of "ONE WORLD" had audience participation. Hundreds of fans around the globe had the chance to record themselves singing "Ah" or "One" and submit the recordings to Coldplay. The band then incorporated these vocals into the song's bridge.
• CAPS LOCK: With the exception of "feelslikeimfallinginlove", all songs on the album are stylized in uppercase, with a lowercase "i" in the title.
• Character Title: "JUPiTER" describes a girl named Jupiter who struggles to accept her sexuality/gender identity in an unsupportive environment.
• Concept Album: Although it isn't as heavily conceptualized as Music of the Spheres, all of the songs share a common theme about love, resilience, acceptance and unity of oneself, the people close to them and the world. In the words of Chris Martin himself on an interview with NME:
  Chris Martin: Moon Music is kind of the story of waking up in the morning and feeling terrible about yourself, terrible about the world – depressed, isolated, separate, alone, and not able to be yourself. Through the album, it’s a journey to feeling the complete opposite at the end of the day.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The music video for "feelslikeimfallinginlove".
• Determinator: From the chorus of "iAAM":
  Stood on a sea of pain
  Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain
  I'll be back on my feet again
  'Cause I am a mountain
• Either/Or Title: The official title for "🌈", "ALiEN HiTS / ALiEN RADiO".
• Epic Instrumental Opener: The title track starts with an ambient piece named "Forever Held" by Jon Hopkins before transitioning to an emotional piano ballad.
• Epic Rocking: "🌈" is a six minute suite that begins with a track titled "Neon Forest", an ambient track that transitions into a shoegaze-y explosion and later turns into "Angel Song", a Sigur Rós-y post-rock song with drummer Will Champion providing a Jonsi-like falsetto and a sampled speech of Maya Angelou being played in the background.
• Fading into the Next Song: "MOON MUSiC" → "feelslikeimfallinginlove" and "JUPiTER" → "GOOD FEELiNGS".
• Filk Song: Zero guesses to what "The Karate Kid" is about.
• Green Aesop: The "First Edition" of the CD and LP versions of the album, labeled as EcoCD and EcoRecord LP respectively, were announced to be made using recycled plastic bottles that were recovered from post-consumer waste found in water streams.
• Hidden Track:
  • "JUPiTER" ends with an orchestral reprise of the song that later transitions to "GOOD FEELiNGS";
  • At the end of "AETERNA", there's an African chant reprise of "feelslikeimfallinginlove" that last for a few seconds.
  • "ONE WORLD" is immediately followed by a rendition of "Orange", a song Chris played on the 2024 Radio 1's Big Weekend, but with him and Will singing only "lalalas" instead of the actual lyrics from "Orange".
• Initialism Title: "iAAM" which is referred to as "I am a Mountain" based on the lyrics.
• Limited Lyrics Song: "ONE WORLD" has the lines "Oh one world...only one world..." repeated a few times before it becomes fully instrumental and then Chris ends the song by repeating the phrase "In the end, it’s just love".
• Longest Song Goes Last: "ONE WORLD" ends the album and is the longest at 6:47.
• Lucky Charms Title: Track 6 of the album is represented by a rainbow emoji (🌈), with its official title being "ALiEN HiTS / ALiEN RADiO".
• One-Word Title: "JUPiTER", "AETERNA" and the initialist "iAAM".
• Out-of-Genre Experience: "WE PRAY" is a major departure from the Coldplay sound, even moreso than their previous outings, being a symphonic hip-hop that contains features from the Afrobeat artists Little Simz and Burna Boy, the Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna and the Argentinian singer Tini providing the final choir vocals.
  • Ditto for "AETERNA", which is a full-on electronic dance song, and it's even more danceable than the EDM-tinged "A Sky Full of Stars" from Ghost Stories.
• Shout-Out: The chorus of "WE PRAY" mentions "Baraye", a protest song by Iranian singer Shervin Hajipour.
• Silly Love Songs: "feelslikeimfallinginlove" and "ALL MY LOVE" are basically this trope incarnate. Hell, the latter could arguably be nicknamed "Wedding Vows: The Song".
• Song of Prayer: "WE PRAY".
• Spoken Word in Music: "🌈" samples a speech from Maya Angelou that she made on the show Super Soul Sunday with Oprah Winfrey.
• Stepford Smiler: The opening title track somewhat deconstructs the more optimistic and resilient lyrics on the rest of the album by showing that there are cracks on the hopeful thoughts that the narrator has about the world.
• Step Up to the Microphone: Drummer Will Champion gets his time to shine on the second half of "🌈", providing a falsetto vocal reminiscent of Jónsi from Sigur Rós.
• Textless Album Cover: The cover art was taken from Argentinian photographer Matías Alonso Revelli, which depicts a moonbow, a phenomenon that occurs when the rainbow is created by moonlight instead of the sunlight.
• Trans Tribulations: "JUPiTER" may be about this, with the lyrics stating that the title character "wasn't free to be exactly who she ought to be" and "had to hide away for so long", with most of the song describing her journey to self-acceptance. It should be noted that Jupiter is the name of a masculine god and Roman counterpart to Zeus.

Love
In the end, it’s just love
In the end, it’s just love
In the end, it’s just love