The Singles Jukebox

Ooh, we’re blinded by the… uh, something…

[Video]
[3.91]

Samson Savill de Jong: Coldplay are a band which inhabit that [3]-[7] range. I’ve never seen them as being anyone’s favourite artist (although by now they probably are just through sheer longevity), but they’ve stuck around for so long because they never make anything truly offensive, and once in a while they will make a banger that makes the rest of it worthwhile. (Everyone has a favourite Coldplay song despite the band not being anyone’s fav). In Coldplay’s world of serviceable music, “Higher Power” is certainly music that’s being served up. It’s fine — takes a little time to find its feet before settling into its groove, and even then it feels a bit limp — and will happily sit on radios that people won’t switch the station from and ads that people won’t pay attention to.
[5]

Iain Mew: Coldplay have rarely hidden their musical inspirations, but this one takes it to a new level. Even when they sampled Kraftwerk, “Talk” didn’t owe as much to “Computer Love” as “Higher Power” does to “Dancing in the Dark”. When the verse reaches “This boy is electric” in place of “This gun’s for hire” it hits a trifecta of simultaneously matching words, melody and musical style; perhaps the simple answer is that the higher power getting Chris Martin singing and dancing is The Boss. If “Dancing in the Dark” were my music rather than just something I’ve been aware of forever, its shiny reflection might carry more power for me. As it is this feels like a mostly empty exercise.
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: Max Martin has succeeded in making them sound like the British Maroon 5, though Chris Martin’s eager embrace of this bullshit deserves some of the blame, too.
[2]

Juana Giaimo: I feel this song would be much more interesting without Chris Martin. I like the fast beat of the verses with those tinkling keyboard sounds and the vast feeling of the chorus. But Chris Martin isn’t even trying to match up to all that is happening around him; he seems to be putting the least amount of effort possible by just repeating words to fill in the verses. When he finally wakes up in the last chorus, it’s already too late, and besides, the melody changes sound almost out of tune. I’m afraid he is the one not feeling the higher power, whatever that means.
[4]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: As someone who grew up genuinely loving Coldplay, it’s been difficult for me to pinpoint exactly what hasn’t been clicking about their most recent music. On its face, “Higher Power” is classic, sweet Chris Martin, singing over a “Blinding Lights” beat. But upon closer inspection the real problem are the Katy Perry-ified lyrics. Old Coldplay songs felt like personal moments that listeners were lucky to overhear; this sounds designed to sound universal and big, and falls flat on its face for it. 
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Navigating the tension of wanting to be both U2 and A-Ha at the same time has been pretty good for Coldplay, but “Higher Power” is too slavish to Chris Martin’s memories of the ’80s. I’m sure he’s meant to be having fun, but there’s nothing uplifting or frisky or compelling. Out of the many pop-rock styles Coldplay have played with over the years, this might be the least flattering for this particular song.
[4]

Katie Gill: Any guesses as to what commercial this was designed to score?
[3]

Vikram Joseph: Listening to them flailing for some kind of relevancy in 2021, it’s easy to forget that there was a point in time, ever-receding into the distance, at which Coldplay were decent. I think “Higher Power” is meant to be fun, but it’s the sort of fun that dads have on the dancefloor at a wedding shortly before they throw their back out. The bare adequacy of the chorus just emphasises how flaccid and earthbound the synths sound; the verses and middle-eight feel distinctly half-cooked, and Chris Martin sounds like he simply has nothing left to say. It’s a John Hughes soundtrack on statins, a visceral whole-body cringe of a song.
[2]

Alfred Soto: Give’em this: when Coldplay records a song called “Higher Power,” it’s about a higher power. No shilly-shallying about highfalutin things like “irony.” So they mix up the bass, make the drums go flippety-floppety, and the result is late ’00s Bloc Party in its devotion to a synth pop urgency the band has convinced themselves they feel. 
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: “Higher Power” is a song defined less by what it is than what it’s not, like the track has its own inner monologue: no, don’t sound too much like “The Streets of Cairo”; no, not too much like “Blinding Lights”; no, not too much like “Take on Me” or “Dancing in the Dark,” or the dozens of other songs that also strain to not sound like these things. Yet all this referential negative space (as opposed to sonic negative space, which there… isn’t much of) in “Higher Power” does come together into something pleasant, like some retrowave reimagination of a news-broadcast jingle without the actual news.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: You’ve got a higher power; they’ve got the beeps from Ask the Audience. Or is it Text the Nation? Either way, Coldplay’s shameless grabs for hits have come far more memorable than this — the chorus is catchy, but doesn’t stick, never as soaring as seems intended. At Glastonbury this weekend, they played it first, and closed with “A Sky Full of Stars”. There is a lot to be said for those positions.
[6]