Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends is the highly anticipated fourth full-length studio album by Coldplay. Featuring over 45 minutes of music across ten new tracks, it represents a significant evolution in the signature Coldplay sound. Viva la Vida, which takes its name from a painting by 20th century Mexican artist Friday Kahlo (not the painting featured on the cover, which is Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix), translates as "Live the Life" in Spanish.
Legendary producer and musician Brian Eno, who has worked with Paul Simon, David Bowie, and U2, was on-hand to help guide Coldplay into the musical world of Viva la Vida. New to the oeuvre are sweeping instrumentals, lush soundscapes, and jaunting rhythms. This sonic development is akin to frontman Chris Martin's lyrical evolution, with the band proclaiming the new lyrical foundation to be "much more abstract, much more visual than before," as well as "less straight-forward, more oblique".
Where soft arena rock was the modus operandi before, Viva la Vida relishes in its moments of the most familiar and alienating sounds. If that seems paradoxical, it is! With their latest release, Coldplay has perfected the art of effortlessly blending plaintive, infectious melodies with atypical song structures, abrasive electric guitars, and Latin-spiced rhythmic deviations.
