This is definitely the first time..

…I’ve ever really wanted to listen to “The Scientist” by Coldplay. The last time I heard it all the way through was in the ten-hour line to get into Bonaroo in 2004 at about 7 in the morning. We were all so wiped from sitting in traffic from 10 pm the night before that we couldn’t muster the energy to take A Rush of Blood to the Head out of the CD player, and I think I heard each song about six times. I’m pretty sure Jessica said she knows the girl who was the inspiration for “The Scientist, “—and that she was just a month-long fling—but I was so delirious I can’t be sure.

Anyway, regarding Coldplay, Naveen got me into them before they broke in the States in late 2000, and I listened to Parachutes obsessively the week I had to fly down to Orange County from Stanford when my grandfather died. Perhaps that’s why this album is so rich for me, but I think “Shiver” is just about the best song ever written by anybody, and dissappontingly superior to anything they’ve written since. Maybe it goes back to that old adage of a writer spends his whole life coming up with material for his first album, and one year coming up with material for the next. Coldplay used to want to sound like Jeff Buckley, but now they sound like Diet U2. I can’t even listen to it. Radiohead wanted to sound like Jeff Buckley, too, but then they just got weirder and better. And I’ve still never seen Radiohead live because I’m too afraid of how emotionally unwell I’d be during and afterward.