Artist: Coldplay
Track name: The Scientist
Album: A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Length: 5 minutes 8 seconds

Lyric removed for copyright reasons

The Song

The song is typical Coldplay, and if you don't know what typical Coldplay sounds like then I highly recommend listening to at least some of the tracks from their first album, Parachutes. It is a combination of a beautiful simple piano melody, soft, pleasant guitar and drumwork, and Chris Martin's excellent-yet-slightly-croaky acquired-taste vocals. The song is pleasant, though not quite as moving as some of the band's earlier work (see Yellow and most of the rest of Parachutes).

In my opinion, it could use more "content" than just the piano melody - it could benefit from being several instruments or decibels louder. But even so, it gives me goosebumps now and then.

The Video

A good video can actually improve the listening of the song... The Scientist is one such video. Most of the way through I was left cold with a sensation of boredom - it's a basic watch-the-singer(s)-sing scenario... until right at the end when everything clicked (for me, at least).

We begin with a closeup on the face of the band's lead singer Chris Martin, who is lying on his back on a mattress. The camera pulls back as he sings the opening lines. The mattress is outside in some concreted inner-city area. Martin shifts slightly on the mattress, and suddenly, in a very strange and jerky fashion, springs up to be standing over it. A man on a black stunt bicycle goes past in the background, only backwards. We quickly realise what's going on - the video was filmed entirely in reverse. It also tells a story, in reverse.

Still singing, Martin, wearing jeans and a plain white long-sleeved shirt, walks backwards away from the mattress and through the city. He spends some time walking a street of shops with a number of people all walking backwards just like he is. We see him walk past a hedge which overhangs the pavement - as he brushes past the green branches they stop waving and become perfectly still. We watch him take a very strange running jump backwards up a large concrete ledge, and continue to stride across some rusty railway tracks.

All this time, he is clearly singing the song, and it is at around the hedge scene that we realise that despite the film going backwards, Martin's lip-synch with the words of the song is still perfect. This is not due to CGI - he is actually singing the song backwards. An impressive thing to have learned, and without which the video probably wouldn't have "worked".

After the railway tracks, Martin reaches the forest. He jogs up a hillside and into the woods, just as it starts to get dark. He reaches the top. He flings his hand backwards to catch a stick that flies out of the darkness, and then puts it on the ground. A black shape is seen on the ground - Martin holds his arm out and it leaps to his hand. It's a black jacket. Martin puts it on and buttons it up, then as the sun comes up again he continues to walk backwards out of the forest, to a grassy valley between two areas of woodland.

At last, the question of why he was in the forest begins to be partially answered. Another black shape is found on the ground. This time, it's a woman, in her twenties. She is lying on her face in the grass, not moving, wearing a black jacket. Martin seemingly ignores her. Instead, he goes to a black BMW which is sitting nearby with badly dented bodywork and a smashed windscreen. He opens the driver-side door and climbs in. He stops singing. A look of shock briefly crosses his face and then he suddenly collapses into his seat, unconscious.

The BMW begins to bob up and down on its suspension. Small pieces of glass scattered on the ground near the woman begin to rise in the air, and then she and they fly backwards off the ground, back through the windscreen of the BMW. The screen fixes itself, and the woman lands back in her seat just as the BMW suddenly bounces up in the air. We watch the car roll backwards up the hill, rapidly becoming less and less damaged. It careers backwards through a wooden fence, mending it, and then swerves around a truck back onto a road through another forest. Martin is finally left driving the vehicle backwards along the roadway, singing the last lines of the song, while the woman in the passenger seat, presumably his girlfriend or wife, grins and shares friendly conversation with him.

As Martin sings the final four "Ooooohhhhhhh"s, the girl struggles out of her black jacket and places it on the back seat of the car. Then, she puts her seatbelt on.

The video ends.

<- 03 God Put A Smile Upon Your Face | 05 Clocks ->

don't node lyrics, node the song

Four Chings? For this? Are you kidding?

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