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Q MagazineDec 9, 2015This warm and busy album pursues pop as a democratic ideal. The uplift isn't subtle--the tracklisting looks like something you'd come up with after a wrap of MDMA-- but it's infectious. [Jan 2016, p.110]
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Dec 7, 2015If A Head Full of Dreams really is to be Coldplay’s last hurrah, then they’ve gone out with a flashbang of colour and catharsis.
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Dec 7, 2015[Chris Martin's] hinted that this could be Coldplay's last album; if so, they're going out on a sustained note of grace.
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Dec 7, 2015More than any previous Coldplay release, A Head Full of Dreams sounds like a pop record; the band has never been catchier.
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Dec 7, 2015Coldplay cheerfully embrace the cheese, ratcheting up both the sparkle and the sentiment so the album feels genuine in its embrace of eternal middle-aged clichés.
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Dec 4, 2015Clearly, the members of Coldplay haven’t completely shaken off their ghosts. But just as clearly, they’ve found joy again in “Dreams.”
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Dec 2, 2015Blissful even at its most bittersweet, it’s an album on which three songs make lyrical references to diamonds--as in, “We are diamonds”--and every surface contentedly gleams.... Mr. Martin, who has rediscovered the radiant properties of his voice, gilds a lot of lyrical treacle and borderline nonsense here.
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Dec 7, 2015The album doesn’t always work, but more often than not it sounds enough like vintage Coldplay to satisfy both diehards and casual listeners.
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Dec 7, 2015The deceptive lack of star power would be less of an issue if there was more here to break up the album’s mid-tempo monotony.
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Dec 7, 2015The reinventions just aren’t brave enough.
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Dec 4, 2015A Head Full of Dreams is frustratingly blighted by the sense that Coldplay haven’t fully committed to the album’s big idea: they keep deviating from the Stargate pop plan to knock out stuff like Amazing Day.
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Dec 4, 2015The absence of those usual big arena hooks proves critical through the rest of the album, when the songs don’t quite hit home.
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Dec 3, 2015A Head Full of Dreams might have been a poptimist masterpiece. Instead, it's just another Coldplay album, with all the baggage--both positive and negative--that entails.
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Dec 3, 2015Throughout, the band’s big, bittersweet sound is, as ever, wonderfully immersive: whalesong cycles of electric guitar echoing through a buoyant soup of synths that sound both pleasant and forgettable.
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Dec 2, 2015It's consistently uplifting and bright, and its best moments feature powerful orchestral sweeps, a surprisingly adept disco hook and even some gospel. But the lyrics are often so cringe-worthy that A Head Full Of Dreams comes off like that one friend of yours who's so positive you want to punch him.
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Dec 7, 2015There are a few good songs, but A Head Full of Dreams is disappointing because it's the first Coldplay album in awhile that is distinctly less than the sum of its parts.
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Dec 2, 2015The majority of the track list is made up of songs that run far too long, have beyond cringe worthy concepts and lyrics (see: the attempt at love struck club banger, complete with Beyoncé, on 'Hymn For The Weekend') or simply sound too unoriginal to stand out from the others.
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Dec 8, 2015The best parts of A Head Full Of Dreams are where the band cut loose and play around with expectations.... However, those who hate Coldplay with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns will also find plenty to grease their wheels on A Head Full Of Dreams. There’s the lyrics for a start, which are almost universally terrible.
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Dec 7, 2015On most of the album, Coldplay's relatively buoyant music tries to submerge the band's most annoying trait. But sometimes Chris Martin, lyricist, just can't help himself.
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Dec 4, 2015No matter how overblown or nonsensical Coldplay have progressively gotten since 2002’s watermark A Rush of Blood to the Head, as long as they deliver one gobsmacking single per album, they’re kings--and rightfully so. That’s how you build a career. A Head Full of Dreams follows suit with first single “Adventure of a Lifetime”.
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Dec 4, 2015Even when A Head Full of Dreams hints at experimentation, it inevitably drifts back onto predictable paths.
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Dec 16, 2015Instead of its wide-eyed optimism rubbing off onto others, this album has the effect of canned laughter bouncing off the walls. It’s a hundred nutritional yoghurts being mushed into bland liquid nothingness.
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Dec 11, 2015It’s clear that Coldplay retain their thirst, their passion for making music--it’s merely a shame that it results in such polite noises.
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MojoDec 9, 2015A big record, but one that leaves little mark. [Jan 2016, p.88]
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Dec 4, 2015The more you dive into these strange Dreams, the more it’s obvious that after trying to stylistically copy various groups on Ghost Stories, here they’re outright ripping them off.
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Dec 14, 2015The head feels weighed down with unresolved torment, the smile forced and awkward, the colours garish and messily-applied.
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Dec 11, 2015Coldplay's seventh album A Head Full of Dreams is insufferably bland at best and downright offensive at worst.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 275 out of 461
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Mixed: 121 out of 461
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Negative: 65 out of 461
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Dec 4, 2015
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Dec 4, 2015
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Dec 4, 2015