It’s difficult to overstate just how much Coldplay’s music has permeated popular culture throughout the band’s quarter-century tenure. Since catching the public eye, their every album drop has been something an event in and of itself. Even so, a great deal of their ubiquitousness can be owed to a nearly unbroken chain of hit single to hit single released in support of those albums. From “Yellow” to “Viva La Vida” through to more recent chart toppers like “My Universe,” Coldplay singles have been a near constant presence in the records of popular music. It’s difficult, then, to imagine that chain finally breaking – and deliberately, at that. Nevertheless, lead singer Chris Martin alleges that the band’s latest release, “ALL MY LOVE,” is not only to be the final single to accompany their recent Moon Music LP, but also the last proper single of Coldplay’s career. One wonders what sort of shift in artistic priorities such a change accompanies, and what kind of release model the band will adopt going forward. Regardless, even setting aside the song’s potential significance to the band’s greater discography, “ALL MY LOVE” is still a stirring, emotional serenade in its own right.
“ALL MY LOVE” begins softly, with Martin’s gentle vocalizations and piano accompaniment together crafting something that sounds like the distilled essence of the pop/rock ballad. It’s a bit of a cliché to describe any suitably melodic, piano-driven tune as “Beatlesque,” but in the case of “ALL MY LOVE” specifically (and knowing that The Beatles are a tried-and-true inspiration for these fellow Brits) the parallels are too glaring to ignore. The song quickly runs the gamut of Fab Four tricks from rich orchestral accompaniment to psychedelic guitar textures. We’ve even got a brief, flavorful shift to a 3/4 time signature a la “We Can Work It Out” peppered into the wake of the second chorus for taste. It’s at this point that the band proper joins in, replete with slide-guitar and steady, insistent rhythm section. Similarities and homages aside, the final effect is pure, unadulterated Coldplay, and a pristine revisitation of the sound the band perfected on earlier keyboard and voice-centric tracks like “The Scientist” and “Clocks.”
“ALL MY LOVE” is indeed classic Coldplay through and through, filled to the brim with soaring atmospherics and pointedly earnest poetry. The song sounds and reads exactly like it says on the tin – like a love letter to a career of similarly heartfelt ministrations made to eager ears. If “ALL MY LOVE” is indeed to be the last single of Coldplay’s decades-long career, then it seems they’ve chosen to leave charts the same way they came in – with their hearts on their collective sleeves.