“Coloratura” is the twelfth and final track on Coldplay’s 2021 album ‘Music of The Spheres.’ The song was released as the second single from the album on July 23, 2021, and can be considered as the icing on the top of the colorful cake that is their album. Although this is the final song on the album, it really captures the spirit of the album and Coldplay as a band.
‘Music of The Spheres’ is the ninth studio album by Coldplay. The concept behind the album is something divine — higher than the musical notes known to mankind. In cosmology, music of the spheres is a concept relating to the harmony that ensues in the universe with relation to the planets which are spheres.
The word coloratura is defined as “an elaborate melody with runs, trills, wide leaps, or similar virtuoso-like material, or a passage of such music.” Coldplay does justice to this definition by creating a boldly vivid soundtrack for the song and it runs for 10 minutes. The drummer for Coldplay, Will Champion, explained the challenge they faced in performing this mammoth track; “It took us a while to learn how to play “Coloratura” all together as one band, from beginning to end. It’s a challenge and it’s quite nice to feel challenged & feel pressure of a live performance.”
On Apple Music footnotes, Coldplay explained the idea behind the song; “Each album can quite easily be defined by the singles you release on the radio, and it’s always important to us when we make albums to include many different moods and textures and styles. So it was important to us, as a counterbalance to some of the poppier songs, to have something which was unashamedly long and complicated. It started off with more of a conventional song structure, then Chris came in one day and showed us the arrangement including all these interludes and sections between the parts we were already familiar with; it was a big challenge to piece it all together.”
Listen to “Coloratura” by Coldplay
Buy ‘Music of The Spheres’ Album on Apple Music & Amazon
Coldplay “Coloratura” Lyrics Meaning and Song Review
In the song, Coldplay sings of a great beyond — a place of beautiful mysticism and no logic binds your imagination. In this sphere, your mind is free, and this is exactly the kind of atmosphere the melody to this song creates.
Just above the clouds that we see from the ground, lies a magical world beyond our comprehension. All the space missions we have done in the entire human timeline have only seen nothing. Humans are limited to the experiences defined by the laws of nature. The only component in a human that does not follow the laws of nature is our mind.
Throughout the song, Coldplay pays tribute to the amazing space exploration missions that have furthered our knowledge and understanding of the universe, and eventually humbled us.
They pay homage to Galileo Galilei, the famous 16th-century astronomer, and physicist. Although Galileo is not the one who invented the telescope, he is often credited as the man who turned the telescopes towards the heavens and laid the brickwork for the generations of astronomers to widen the understanding of the universe.
Coldplay also mentions famous space exploration missions named ‘Pioneer.’ Many missions laters, these spacecraft have gifted us knowledge of a world that we never knew existed. They also shout out The Voyager missions — The Voyager 1 and 2 are the only manmade objects to leave the Solar System, after being launched in 1977. As of 2021, both spacecraft are still operational and have survived past beyond their main objectives which were to observe Jupiter and Saturn planets.
A special mention in the song is the Oumuamua space object which is still debated to be alien spacecraft. It is the first known interstellar object detected passing through the Solar System. This object was first discovered on October 19, 2017, and at the time it was already moving out of the Solar System. It had its closest encounter to the Sun and took an unconventional turn to turn its trajectory and even observed to be accelerating away. These unusual traits have sparked the debate that it was some form of an alien spacecraft.
Betelgeuse is another popular name in the scientific community that popped up in recent years. Betelgeuse is a massive star, about 16 – 19 times the mass of the Sun in our Solar System. It caught the scientist’s attention as it strangely dimmed in brightness from late 2019 to early 2020.
And these are just a few highlights from the past decade in the world of astronomy. The knowledge that still exists beyond our comprehension is beyond our comprehension.
“Coloratura” is a beautiful homage to everything that lies beyond human comprehension. But we can dream. And dreams do come true.
Let us hear what you think about this song in the comments below. Check out the complete lyrics on Genius.
This song is about what you see when you get to the afterlife. We arrive to the place falling from the clouds. And everyone that passed before us is there, welcoming us. There’s no more death or doubt (we’re already dead so, we don’t have to wonder what will happen). And we’ll be with our loved ones (and loneliness is out). It’s what we always dreamed about. Life is a ” a slow burning tune”, But we’ll get there finally.
In the end it’s all about the love you’re sending out…
To me, coldplay’s coloratura is about an extraterrestrial being who has led a human life before and is seeing the universe from an elevated position realising how the human life is limited to the earth’s nature and the laws that govern it. Tribute however is paid to the heroes of space explorers such as Galileo Galilee for giving us a hint to the free enormous and mysterious world beyond this one. This is a beautiful piece with beautiful instrumentation aswell.
Days before Coldplay release the song, I was letting my mind fly, trying to understand the subatomic particles, quantum entanglement, some of superstrings and Einstein’s relativity with the 4 fundamental forces of nature. Quantum computing and quantum consciousness too.
Just imagine how I felt when Coldplay released this song. My mind has blown in many many pieces.
For me the song came in the best moment and the best place, was amazing!
That is pretty much the perfect backdrop for this kind of song.
Sometimes the universe has its ways…