Thinking ruins everything

In this week’s New Yorker, a Sasha Frere-Jones piece on the British rock group Coldplay describes its type of music this way: “rock that respects the sea change of punk but still wants to be as chest-thumping and anthemic as the music of the seventies stadium gods. Translated, this means short pop songs that somehow summon utterly titanic emotions and require you to skip around in triumphant circles and pump your fist, even if it is not entirely clear what you are singing about.”

Frere-Jones says this type of rock was invented by U2, but I remember even that before the Age of Bono — you know, back in the day — I’d find myself really pumped up by a song, would excitedly read the lyrics and try to parse them … only to discover there was no there there.