Here's Why So Many People Hate Coldplay

It's something that's hard to express, though a lot of people feel it. You can't quite put your finger on it, but something is wrong with this band. What is it that you can't explain but have felt since the first time you heard "Yellow" and saw that dude in the video singing on a beach? The music is there, tormenting you on the radio and on streaming services, like a splinter in your mind driving you up the wall. It's this feeling that's brought you to this article. You want to know: "Do others feel it, too? Am I the only one who hates these guys? Am I really a 'bedwetter' if I like them?"

Yes, many years ago, Coldplay got inducted into that "most hated of hated bands" echelon, similar to U2 and Nickelback. U2 is one of the biggest groups of all time at over 170 million records sold worldwide, and lots of folks hate them, lead singer Bono in particular. Nickelback has sold over 50 million records worldwide, and lots of folks hate them, too, lead singer Chad Kroeger in particular. Coldplay has sold over 100 million records worldwide, and lots of folks hate them — lead singer Chris Martin in particular. Do we detect a pattern?

Coldplay haters often describe the band's music as being droll, milquetoast, soppy, etc. Martin, meanwhile, has been described as "an employee eating a cheese sandwich in his cubicle," per Vice, and much worse. Ultimately, Coldplay hate arises from a tangle of reasons more complex than you might think.

[Featured image by Raph_PH via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY 2.0]

Lots of folks have desperately tried to articulate why they can't stand Coldplay's music. Such descriptions portray it as hollow, full of nauseating platitudes, pretentious to the extreme, empty, "grindingly tedious," (as The Guardian said), and so forth. Comically apoplectic reviews like one on The Quietus called 2014's "Ghost Stories" "one, long stagnant f****** pool of premium grade f****** c***wash! I would rather chew off my f****** scrotum than ever listen again to this boneless f****** melange of morose f****** p***-s***!" Speaking of urine, Creation Records head Alan McGee granted us our famous "Music to wet your bed to" take on Coldplay back in 2000 in a piece for The Guardian.

Even negative reviews from fans have emulated Coldplay's music by coming across as gratingly polite and toothless. Take The B30 Web's review of "Up&Up" from 2015's "A Head Full of Dreams." "It gained steam and grew as the minutes went by, but it also didn't hit the pinnacle that I felt would've been deserving for the song," it read. At this point, a Coldplay hater might respond, "Why can't you just say it sucked?" 

In between both extremes dwell people who recognize Coldplay's impact but perhaps hate that they do. In 2015, The Guardian's headline read, "Coldplay: how can something do banal be so powerful?" The band's music, the article continued, relates an "overwhelming sense of blankness" — like the maxims of a cult leader. It's full of "cliches," "generalizations," and "nondescript balladry," another The Guardian review claimed.

We mentioned how U2 frontman Bono and Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger tend to get targeted for hate more than the other members of their bands. Maybe it's because lead singers are the de facto faces of their groups and tend to get the most attention. Maybe it's because frontmen can come across as cocky because they're exactly that: frontmen. Chris Martin is no different, and lots of people have wondered why, even in Coldplay fan forums. 

But to haters, the reason for the Martin hate is obvious. Take his omnipresent gaping smile, irrepressibly effervescent attitude, and bundle it with a guy who "slides across the floor like a toddler at a pre-school disco, high on Calypso Cups, and punches and kicks the air," as Vice wrote, and voila: instant insufferableness. In 2015, Pitchfork wrote of Coldplay's "A Head Full of Dreams," "The band's relentless campaign to raise our spirits is liable to induce altitude sickness." This critique of Coldplay's music perfectly mirrors critiques of Martin, as though he is a distillation of Coldplay's queasy sentimentality.  

Unfortunately for Martin, his description of himself is only likely to evoke more "Ugh, I hate this guy" responses. As The Guardian quotes him: "This is going to sound really arrogant, but I was trying to say that I was really happy. I said that I don't want to change places with any person in history, ever. I mean that. I'm petrified of reincarnation because, you know, I like being me."

This next part of the Coldplay hate equation is specific to the United Kingdom, but it helps illuminate why folks elsewhere despise the England-birthed band. Those familiar with Ole' Blighty might pause a moment and envision what it's like to step into a dark pub full of working-class Brits sitting around drinking cask ale in silence. Now, go to a TV screen in that pub and flip on a performance of Chris Martin crooning lines like, "Lying in the gutter, aiming for the moon / Trying to empty out the ocean with a spoon." We're going to lean into stereotypes (of the semi-true kind) a bit, but surely the reader can see the disconnect between such a public and Coldplay's shiny, smiley veneer.

Vice perfectly articulated this sentiment in 2016, calling Coldplay's "unbridled positivity ... everything British people find difficult to stomach." "It just doesn't sit right with us," the article continued, saying Chris Martin is "the musical embodiment of Jamie Oliver, but with worse clothes." Coldplay, the band, is "the Brazil football team of British pop music." Fans who protest such analogies (the team has the most wins in FIFA World Cup history) might suggest that Brits ought to chill on the somewhat affected, hard-hearted cynicism and embrace their Dickensian hokeyness within that wants to burst forth, breathe, and prance around in joy — like Martin does. But that's another story altogether. In other words: Coldplay's evident non-Britishness explains why some non-Brits also can't stand them. To such people, the band's glossy sheen comes across as a saccharine, insincere sham.

If asked why Coldplay is garbage, a critic might respond, "Their fifth studio album was called 'Mylo Xyloto.' Also, they've got a song that's a rainbow. Not the word 'rainbow.' The name of the song is a little rainbow picture, like how Prince made himself that symbol. And there's another track called 'feelslikeimfallinginlove,' all one word, lowercase, and with no apostrophe." For some members of the public, this could be enough to induce exhaustion. It also typifies why many people hate Coldplay: To non-fans, they've gone far past the point of pretentious, tacky, and dumb. Even by 2015, The Guardian wrote that Coldplay had progressed from its smallish, guitar-and-keys-centric days to join the ranks of "unashamed makers of manufactured pop." The article said that such a shift represented not an added layer of bubblegum but the removal of the pretense that they were anything else to begin with.

And no, Coldplay hasn't exactly reversed course since then. In recent tracks like 2024's "We Pray," only Chris Martin's voice distinguishes it from other generic, overproduced pop songs, and he sounds like a guest on Coldplay's own track. Also, the song has five singers and 14 writers — yes, 14. Along those lines, Coldplay has drawn flack (or praise, if you're a fan) for descending further into selloutdom by incorporating more and more collaborations. These efforts sound pulled from a random grab-bag of big-named stars: Ed Sheeran, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Harry Styles, Bruno Mars, Kylie Minogue, Selena Gomez, and more.

Finally, we get to the (arguably) least valid reason why some people dislike Coldplay: They've always disliked them. While it's always been easy to trash Coldplay for its schmalz, it's only gotten easier over time. Nylon says that 2005's song "Fix You" — released five years after the group made its 2000 album debut, "Parachutes" — "made us all feel like we were living in a teen soap," but they didn't mean it as criticism. To non-fans, this is exactly the point. But at least the article admits that it's hard to pretend that Coldplay is in any way cool anymore. They've transitioned to making "safe dad music" that's "easy to listen to" and "waiting room-friendly." 

That being said, people and pop culture change along with artists, and it's hard to determine along which axis Coldplay has drawn the most ire. The only way to determine if you hate Coldplay because you've already decided you should is to do the work of being honest with yourself about the band — its music, image, history, etc. If you like it, you like it, and that's that. In this way, Coldplay provides a good lesson applicable to lots of other art and life domains. The same goes for fans: Be honest enough to reevaluate your feelings about long-cherished sacred cows. If necessary, sacrifice the cow, let it go, and keep safe what good memories you have. There you go, Coldplay: Those lyrics are on us.