Felix Felicis or Avada Kedavra?

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[5.92]
Anthony Easton: I sometimes feel like a lazy critic, not working hard enough figuring out why I don’t like artists that it just seems so easy and culturally proper to hate. I even understand how tastes change, how the Carpenters, for example, once at the edge of the taste ghetto have been reclaimed. Like late Elvis or Hall and Oates. I even have written nice things about John Mayer. But, I work at this, I listen to it, try to find a way in, and I am slammed back at every opportunity. If Coldplay is this lazy, why can’t I be too?
[1]
Iain Mew: Since Coldplay faced a crossroads after X&Y and opted out of monochrome irrelevance, they have not been a band to ignore the critics. It’s easy to view “Magic” as the result of them realising that the high-point of Coldplay approval in recent years came via Frank Ocean’s re-imagining of “Strawberry Swing”. They don’t quite capture the full woozy tape deck effect, but get the naked emotion and nostalgia just right, and leave enough space in the arrangement to help sound warmer and more intimate than they have on any single in a decade plus. The lyrics are simplistic, but they fit. To expect more would be to believe in magic.
[8]
Tara Hillegeist: Keeps to the trend of Coldplay’s recent output and comports itself like a Drake song — or maybe more accurately like a bunch of old white British guys singing Drake cover songs, not that there’s all that much difference between Lucifers in “Started from the Bottom” and “God Put a Smile on Your Face” — thereby revealing just how centrally necessary “Fucking Drake” turns out to be to that formula: without anything resembling Aubrey Graham’s exposed misericordia to lash it groundward, “Magic” has none to display.
[2]
Jonathan Bradley: Chris Martin copping Drake’s steez cause rich sensitive assholes have to look out for one another. (Just imagine what Aubrey Graham would have done with a title like “Fix You.”) Not gonna lie; it works, much like Drizzy’s hit rate has been cresting upwards for a minute. Is it wrong to be so glib about what is nothing short of a thoroughly enjoyable tune? Does Martin’s milky mew add anything to his band’s steel-strong web woven from drum patter and guitar thrum? A track subdued, rhythmic, and tinkling like money works for this singer less because of the apparently soulful tones that netted him collabs with Jay and ‘Ye, but because that’s a better look for nearly anyone than stadium-sized guitar loomwork. I hope 40 produces the album.
[8]
Will Adams: Full marks to Paul Epworth’s gorgeous atmospherics here; both Martin and the modest guitar-drum opening keep quiet to let soft organs, pianos, and synth flourishes poke in from the heavens. It’s only appropriate; Martin downplays the magic of this special relationship — only acknowledging it in his falsetto turns — but it’s impossible to deny when the reverb kicks in and the song soars.
[8]
Brad Shoup: Call it “Madness.” And make it praise. Sure, Muse offers four-part harmonies while Coldplay awkwardly smashes one vocal take into snippets from another. But that sly groove is there, and the engineer’s build, from fore to aft, on the verse. And I thought they were goofs, but they’re not, or they’re that goofy best friend that makes his or her third-act ascension. It’s all atmosphere and ragged falsetto and a thousand parts tossed into a slo-mo blender. This is glorious nonsense.
[8]
Juana Giaimo: After the synth saturated sound of Mylo Xyloto, a minimalistic song like “Magic” is like a dose of fresh air. The repetition of the verses and simple words lets them play around while always remaining safe. Where Coldplay used to focus on making lovely melodies that appeal to everyone — and of which most of us were getting tired — this time it’s the subtle development of the details that guides their sound.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Aiming for an Usher-produced-by-Ariel-Rechtshaid sound, they succeed in creating their first earworm chorus since 2003. They sure spent a lot of money to create the kind of Effortless Pop Single that Rolling Stone still thinks U2 record.
[6]
David Sheffieck: Unlike “Midnight,” this actually sounds like a Coldplay song, with a swooning climax and a lyric that can fit almost any emotional state their audience is in; like “Midnight,” it’s the sonic equivalent of watching paint dry.
[2]
Scott Mildenhall: Not as boring as it initially seems. It’s tired in a warm way, as if, after a hard day worm-carrying, Chris Martin has finally returned home, and you’re there, and it makes him happy, and he feels completely content. He’s too worn out for any grand gestures, but then they’re often empty vessels. This is much easier to believe in.
[7]
Megan Harrington: I’m certain that “Magic” is boring and derivative; I happen to also find it soothing, something of an adult lullaby. From the meditatively orange opening notes, the song locks into a deeply relaxing and repetitive loop that helps to gently slow and regulate my breathing. The bright “Doot-da-doot-doot-do” and emergence of the guitar line is the last heaving sigh before sleep. Coldplay are the ultimate in bedsit; I just don’t think that’s worst.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: “I don’t, no I don’t, no I don’t… want anyone else but you,” Chris Martin coos, like an automaton designed to be vaguely comforting. I appreciate either the accidental genius or the audacity in making a comfortable-sounding nod-along about the idea of a love that’s magical, as if to deny the pop trope that great love is endlessly being swept off the feet. Love as the dreamer while dreaming, not the dream itself, if you will. And damn it, his voice is sincere enough that I’m seeing it as a big, gloopy romantic accident and enjoying it despite the fact that it’s wet, wet, wet. Maybe the relative non-ageing of Gwyneth Paltrow is evidence that we should all be so lucky?
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: The best thing ever written about Coldplay was by Kate Atkinson, in Not the End of the World: Rebecca, a snobbish teenager who spends most of her time studying for med school, bleaching her clothes, calling people classless, and being terrible to her depressed mother and metalhead brother, tries to block out her mom’s date (a page after wishing she’d “drop dead of a brain hemorrhage and leave [them] to get on with [their] lives”) with headphones: Haydn, Spiritualized, and Coldplay. The characterization-by-association, or maybe association-by-characterization, is perfect, though maybe she should’ve listened to the falsetto section here. Nothing could survive that.
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