One of the most popular bands of the 21st century had to start somewhere. On July 10th, 2000, British rock band Coldplay released their debut LP, Parachutes, in the United Kingdom. The four band members and producers Ken Nelson and Chris Allison co-produced it, except for the single “High Speed”, which Allison produced alone.
Acting as a debut for what is now one of the world’s most recognisable and approachable rock outfits, it comes as no surprise that Parachutes performed well throughout the course of Coldplay’s career, with it being the 22nd best-selling album of the 21st century in the United Kingdom.
It was initially met with largely positive reactions from critics, but the recording was slow going in the band’s early days. Production began in late 1999 after the release of The Blue Room EP, but delays ensued because the band took time to record new tracks for Parachutes rather than reuse tracks from their EP.
When the time came to record, producer Chris Allison was not confident in the band. “They started up playing in the rehearsal room and they really weren’t together at all. And I was very honest with them, I just sort of said, ‘Look, this simply isn’t good enough,'” Allison describes in the biography novel Coldplay: Look at the Stars.
“The most significant thing that did occur out of the fact that we didn’t end up starting the album on that day of the rehearsal was that Chris Martin had not written ‘Yellow’ by that time”.
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of metal, rock, indie, pop, and everything else in between.
On international release, Parachutes was a worldwide success. Releasing in Australia in 2001, it would end the year at number 13 on the ARIA charts, and has since become four times Platinum certified and sold over 280,000 copies down under.
It’s been noted that the album is largely a slow tempo, with objectively happy lyrics that have a now-signature moody Coldplay feel to them, with one of the least positive main media reviews coming from Pitchfork, which described the album as “harmless and pretty…[but] nothing else.” Rolling Stone gave the album a three-and-a-half out of five, saying “Parachutes ultimately rises above its influences to become a work of real transcendence.”
