Tracklisting Released

Here are the songs set to appear on the upcoming Viva la Vida album

"Life In Technicolor"
"Cemeteries Of London"
"Lost!"
"42"
"Lovers In Japan/Reign Of Love"
"Yes"
"Viva La Vida"
"Violet Hill"
"Strawberry Swing"
"Death And All His Friends"

For those of you wondering where the rest of the songs are i'm sorry to say that they are the only songs set to appear on the album. before i say anything else let me get some things straight. it is down right impossible to judge any album from the titles of the songs and the order in which they are going to appear so this announcement tell us very little about the album itself. on top of this announcement the band has promised us a "couple" of singles before the release of the album which is great news as it means that we will most probably being hearing some new songs by the end of the month or early in May (either 'Yes' or 'Violet Hill' or '42'). Despite the rather superficial nature of this news i still do have a couple of issues.

first the fact that the album will only have 10 songs and will run for a rumoured 42 minutes. this is significantly shorter than previous records. Being a long time Linkin Park fan short albums don't bother me that much (their first two albums combined are just over an hour). what irritates me is that this album has taken over a year to record and a band of Coldplay's calibre i feel should be churning out more than 10 good songs in a year (assuming that they are all good). of course i didn't expect a 'Wall' style double album epic but i would think that the band would give me more than 10 songs for my $15. making the album so short has only added pressure on the band on top of the delayed release and 'new sound'. at this point the music world expects nothing short of a masterpiece. Radiohead's In Rainbows album was only 10 tracks and in my opionion is one of the best albums of the decade. hopefully Coldplay give us something on par with that. but according to Billboard there will be a hidden track on the album called 'Escapist'. i personally think that hidden tracks are the stupidest idea to ever hit music.

The second matter is that the band has chosen to omit several songs which will most probably appear as B-sides on their singles. i think i now know why EMI is going under. do the people managing Coldplay actually believe that people still buy singles like they used to. Down here in Australia it takes barely 8000 - 10000 sales of single to reach the number one spot when less than decade ago those numbers would barely get you a top 10 hit. i really hope the band has some Radiohead-esque ideas to make this all work.

I really hope that the band and its management increase the frequency of announcements such as this one. There's nothing better for album releases than media attention. since its been close to two years since 'The Hardest Part' was released most people have moved on from the band (except of course the hardcore fans) so it will take (once again) Radiohead like antics to generate the right amount of hype over the release.