Writer(s):

Guy Berryman/
Jon Buckland/
Will Champion/
Chris Martin


Quotable:

Inspired by the British band Muse, “Clocks” marked the moment when Coldplay decided they could challenge U2 as the world’s biggest band.


First charted:

11/30/2002


Charts:


HT: 29
HP: --
CB: --
UK: 9
AC: --
CW: --
RB: --
AR: --
MR: 9
AA: 4


Sales (in millions):

1.0
--
1.0


Airplay (in millions):

0.4


Awards:


Clocks

Coldplay

Review:

“Coldplay haters are a dime a dozen” LR and much of why the band is criticized rings true: “they’re boring, Chris Martin writes lyrics that are meaningless at best and embarrassing at worst, they’ve inspired a generation…that tries to soar and mostly just whines.” DS

However, on songs like “Clocks” “there’s something to the construction of the song that can be admired.” DS It is “built around one of the most compelling piano riffs of the entire decade.” AB’00 It “doesn’t progress like a standard Romantic melody, it interlocks and shifts with the tides.” DS “From those first piano plinkings, it is a soaring trip through the thinnest air.” LR“It’s almost unnerving, how Martin’s voice gets more delicate while the music gets more strident.” LR

The song wasn’t initially intended for A Rush of Blood to the Head, the band’s second album. Martin “had a crisis of confidence about the proposed release” NME’09 “en route to filing the tracklisting to label Parlophone” NME’09 and requested a two-month delay on the album’s release. At the suggestion of the band’s manager Phil Harvey, recorded “Clocks.” NME’09

The title alludes to “the world’s obsession with time” AMG while the lyrics pose the big question regarding our purpose for being here. Martin has said British rock band Muse served as the song’s inspiration, AB’00 but U2 is really the other band at play here since “Clocks” marks the moment when Coldplay thought “they could challenge U2 as The World’s Biggest Band.” PD


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Last updated November 25, 2011.