The first two Coldplay songs I ever heard was “Speed of Sound” and “Clocks.” When I was a sophomore in high school, my already music-obsessed self soon found more of their songs online, like “Talk” and “Fix You.” The lyrics about navigating uncertainty and loss resonated with the emotional turmoil of my teenagehood. Music was one of the ways I coped with these difficulties. If you want to know more about how their music has helped me, here’s a link to the post on my other blog.

Life in Technicolor: A Celebration of Coldplay is a “coffee table” book published in 2018 to mark the 20th anniversary of the band, compiled by Debs Wild & Malcolm Croft. The book documents the band’s journey from 1998 to 2018, profiling each album and band members. The “scrapbook” style includes photos from each album era and pictures of memorabilia like concert flyers.

Most music fans, like myself, are very familiar with listening to songs from an album, but it was interesting to learn more about the history and songwriting process. One notable example is “Yellow,” a very successful single from Coldplay’s early days. Its origins stem from a night when the band took a break from recording Parachutes and went outside to see the night sky filled with stars. They weren’t intending to write a song inspired by it, but lead single Chris Martin started singing about the stars, and thus “Yellow” was born.

This is the kind of book that you can take your time working through. I slowly read it over a couple of months, wanting to fully absorb the information and pictures. I enjoyed it, and I think any other Coldplay fans would too.