Everything was born by chance, as often happens with great songs. In 1999 Coldplay they are with historians Rockfield StudiosWales, together with their producer And Nelson. This is the same recording studio where i Queen they engraved Bohemian Rhapsody. The same studio where a few years earlier Noel Gallagherlooking at a stone wall that stood outside, he wrote Wonder wall. Coldplay are there to record Parachutes, their first album, and one night Ken Nelson invites them to relax after a recording session. “Look at the stars, guys,” he says to the young London band, pointing them to a particularly starry sky. Three out of four Coldplays roll their eyes. One, the front man Chris Martinpicks up a notepad and begins to write “look at the stars”. In ten minutes a first draft of what it will become is born YellowColdplay’s first great success, whose meaning we will try to dissect today.
At this point Martin had a text, but everything else was missing. In fact it is common practice for bands, especially rock ones, that the music is composed first and then a text is adapted to the melody. So Coldplay found themselves having to reverse the creative process. The first intuition was born absolutely for fun, when Chris Martin took an acoustic guitar and sings the introduction of the lyrics imitating Neil Young’s singing style. What was just a game to make bandmates laugh becomes the seed from which Yellow’s definitive composition is born.
Once a first draft was arranged, the band spent weeks deciding what speed to give it. The drummer Will Champion he recalled that at least five versions were tested, with five different speeds, before arriving at the one we know today.
The choice of the title comes from… the Yellow Pages
During these 23 years there has been much discussion about the title of Yellow by Colplay, the choice of that color and the meaning that this could hide. According to many yellow is a color with negative implications, finding parallels with the yellow card in football after a foul or yellow fever. Someone else even sees us as a tribute to the yellow submarine gods Beatles.
In reality the story is much simpler. During an episode of Storytellers for VH1, Chris Martin explained that in the final draft of the text and the title he was out of ideas. The turning point comes when he by chance takes a book and reads: Yellow Pages, the Yellow Pages. “In an alternate universe this song could have been called PlayBoy,” Chris Martin jokes.
“The word yellow sounded good, it seemed to fit everything else, no other reason. None of the other colors would have sounded so good”Chris Martin would later say.
The meaning of Yellow by Coldplay
Martin also explained that the text speaks of love understood as devotion to someone. The protagonist of the song would do anything for his loved one: from writing a song to swimming across the ocean. Chris Martin claimed he didn’t have a specific person in mind when he wrote the lyrics for Yellowwhose meaning can therefore embrace 360-degree love, both towards the partner and towards a relative or friend.
What the text of Yellow tells us
Look at the stars, look how they shine for you
And everything you do
Yeah, they were all yellow
Taking up Ken Nelson’s words that famous evening, Chris Martin describes a love so strong that he imagines that even the stars in the sky shine only for the loved one, to whom he addresses himself.
I came along, I wrote a song for you
And all the things you do
And it was called Yellow
Continuing with the pattern of those who are willing to do everything for each other, the song becomes meta-music. Martin seems to tell us “even this same song, which is called Yellow, I wrote it for you”
So then I took my turn
Oh, what a thing to have done
And it was all yellow
But love is made of waiting, of waiting one’s turn. After all Charles Aznavour sang: “in my blue dress, I’m being patient”.
Your skin, oh, yeah, your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
You know, you know I love you so
You know I love you so
The meaning of the chorus of Coldplay’s Yellow can embrace different interpretations. Although Chris Martin has explained that the song is about love and feelings, many see us as a reference to anorexiato being skin and bones (skin and bones) and the yellow color which indicates poor health. The beauty of songs, after all, is that everyone can see what they want in them.
I swam across, I jumped across for you
Oh, what a thing to do
‘Cause you were all yellow
I drew a line, I drew a line for you
Oh, what a thing to do
And it was all yellow
The second verse, in its entirety, shows us the protagonist reiterating that he would do anything for the other person. He would dive into the boundless ocean to reach her (in a passage that is very reminiscent of the first verse of I Still Haven’t found what I’m looking for of the U2). In the second part of the verse the protagonist he says he is willing to draw a yellow line. It is probably a reference to the yellow lines of subways and train stations: give yourself a limitbecause otherwise love can overwhelm you like a running train, especially if only one of the two is willing to give everything.
Your skin, oh, yeah, your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
And you know, for you, I’d bleed myself dry
For you, I’d bleed myself dry
The second chorus features a small change to the lyrics. Instead of singing “you know I love you so”Martin sings “for you, I’d bleed myself dry“. This variation could confirm the hypothesis of the yellow line: the protagonist has given so much of himself that he is ready to bleed out. And here too, wanting to take a trip to Genoa, we can find a concept expressed by Fabrizio De Andrè it is The Ballad of Blind Love.
It’s true, look how they shine for you
Look how they shine for you
In the outro Martin brings us back to the beginning and to the very essence of the meaning of Yellow by Coldplay: “everything revolves around you”.
Originally the official video was supposed to show the whole band
The official video for Yellow consists of a continuous shot of only Chris Martin walking and singing the song on a beach in Studland Bay, Dorset, England. The recovery begins at night, but dawn arrives during the piece, as if to symbolize the rebirth after a love affair. The singer, and his raincoat, appear wet and the sky is cloudy, this suggests that the man spent the night in the rain.
Initially the plans were to shoot the whole band walking along the sunny beach with many extras around them. However, shortly before filming began, drummer Will Champion’s mother passed away. The band had already hired the crew for filming and then it was decided to shoot with only Chris Martin, to allow the other members to go to the funeral. Furthermore, rain was forecast for that morning, so it was decided to give up the idea of the crowded beach in the sun and the extras. The Parachutes album is dedicated to Will Champion’s mother.
The video has a slow motion effect. To achieve this effect Chris Martin had to sing the song at twice the speed (having to run at a higher frame rate to allow for slow motion). Similar solutions were also used for the video American Idiot of the Green Day and, in Italy, for that of Talk to me forever by Sick Drum. In this backstage video just gods Sick Tamburo you can see how, in practice, a take with the song played at double speed is achieved.
Only a few years ago Coldplay, through their TikTok account, published some unpublished images from the video clip. These are shots never used in the official video.
The Cultural Impact of Yellow: The Song Elton John Wished He’d Written
Many music critics believe that Yellow was the song that definitively changed the music of the 2000s. In the late 90s the US charts were dominated by band crossover e now metallic, which mixed heavy music and rap. Some striking examples are Rage Against the Machine, Limp Bizkit e KoRn (see Woodstock 1999). In 2020 drummer Will Champion agreed with this vision, stating that according to him Yellow represented a breath of fresh air for the American public. “I think, especially when we brought the song to America, it was something very different from what was on the radio there”Champion said. “There was a lot of that nu metal, like that of Limp Bizkit. It was heavy music, very masculine. I think Yellow was something new for America.“
According to Songfacts, after a Colplay concert at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 2000, Liam Gallagherfrontman of the Oasis, would praise Yellow, calling it a song that inspired him to write new music. Even Elton John he would have said of Yellow that “it’s the only song of the last five years that I’ve wanted to write”.
Yellow has become so iconic that it permeates the English language. For example, on TikTok, many users refer to people they love as the term “my yellow”. The song was also paid homage by Chris Martin himself in Inka track from the Coldplay album Ghost Stories, released in 2014. In this Martin takes up a part of the text of Yellow, singing “all I know is that I love you so”.
Those interested in the purely compositional side of the song, we recommend the episode of Justin Hawkins Rides Again, the podcast of Justin Hawkinsfrontman day The Darkness, which parses Yellow. Specifically, Hawkins points out the ingenious idea of inverting the vowels of the choruses of the refrains, with a descending solution and not, as usually happens in harmonies, an ascending one. Find the episode in question of the podcast below.
The live performances and advice of Michael Stipe of REM
Initially, shortly after its release, Chris Martin used to sing the song live with continuous variations to the melody. He would only stop doing it on the advice of Michael Stipefrontman day REM. Stipe would tell him: “Stop doing that. People want to hear songs the way they know them.”
It goes without saying that the song is now an irremovable element of Coldplay’s live setlists. Among the various exhibitions we remember the one in 2011 on the occasion of Celebrating Steve Jobs, in the tribute event to the founder of Apple, who passed away just two weeks earlier. Before performing the song, Chris Martin revealed that he first played it for Jobs in 2001, adding, “He said it was shit and we’d never make it.”
At Glastonbury Festival 2013, during their headlining set, the Arctic Monkeys briefly paid homage to Yellow. The frontman Alex Turner he should have played theirs Cornerstone but since the two songs share the first chord, Turner decided to briefly mention Yellow before interrupting the audience’s enthusiasm and singalong to sing the Arctic Monkeys song.
Parachutes
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