You don’t want to listen to “Clocks” greater than as soon as for the piano to lodge itself in your cranium. Coldplay launched it in 2002 on A Rush of Blood to the Head, and inside eighteen months it had gained the Grammy for Document of the Yr. The track withholds decision so utterly that when it lastly gives one, it not looks like a solution. It’s about being caught inside a relationship that looks like a clock you can’t cease, or extra exactly, about not understanding whether or not you’re the one that fixes issues or the one that breaks them.
Chris Martin wrote the piano riff and a lot of the lyric in about fifteen minutes in a Liverpool studio. The band almost left it off the album. They’d sufficient songs, they have been operating out of time, and so they filed the demo underneath “Songs for #3”, materials for a hypothetical third document. It was their supervisor, Phil Harvey, who advised them they have been being silly. So that they delayed the album by two months and completed “Clocks.”
What’s the track “Clocks” based mostly on? On paper, a really English kind of anxiousness. Martin has stated he was enthusiastic about ethical confusion as a lot as romance: “Am I a part of the treatment? Or am I a part of the illness?” That line will not be rhetorical. He advised Howard Stern in 2021 that the chords got here first, then Jonny Buckland added a guitar half that made the entire thing behave like “a chemical response.” That phrase is exact. A chemical response will not be steady. It doesn’t settle. It retains reacting till one thing outdoors stops it. The track is constructed the identical method.
The piano sample itself borrows from the arpeggiated urgency that British band Muse have been pushing on the time. That’s the reason “Clocks” feels much less like a ballad and extra like one thing always accelerating. Martin performs in E-flat mixolydian, which suggests the notes come from the A-flat main scale. However the chord that will make every little thing really feel settled, A-flat itself, by no means seems till the bridge. Your ear waits for it. The track withholds it. That lacking chord is all the emotional engine.
It’s a small element, however the variety that adjustments the way you hear all the track, one thing we maintain coming again to at Neon Music.
The that means of “Clocks” by Coldplay shifts because it strikes, however the mechanism by no means adjustments. The primary verse seems like drowning: “Lights exit and I can’t be saved,” tides that can not be swum in opposition to, begging on knees. Then comes “a tiger ready to be tamed.” The refrain offers nearly nothing, simply “You might be” repeated, which is both a lifeline or an accusation.
By the second verse, the partitions are closing and the clocks are ticking. The lyrics withhold a transparent topic simply because the concord withholds a transparent chord. You by no means fairly know who “you” is or whether or not Martin is begging or blaming.
What’s particular in regards to the piano riff in “Clocks”? Technically, little or no. Three chords. A easy loop. However the track delays decision not simply harmonically however structurally. The drums use crash cymbals solely on the very finish.
The bass performs the next, extra melodic line solely when the track must push ahead. The guitar barely seems till the ultimate third. Gentle pads climb in register close to the top of verse two, not earlier than. Shiny pads open up the excessive finish solely in the identical sections the place the bass and cymbals change. Coldplay constructed “Clocks” out of virtually nothing and held again each payoff till the final second.
When the important thing does change, it slides up a single step from E-flat mixolydian to D-flat main. Just one notice adjustments, G to G-flat. The bridge, “And nothing else compares,” is the place the piano lastly stops looping and stretches upward. The track by no means offers you the chord your ear was ready for within the unique key. It shifts to a unique key altogether. That’s not a decision. It’s a redirection.
What 12 months did Coldplay “Clocks” come out? As a single within the US, November 2002. Within the UK, March 2003. It reached solely No. 29 on the Billboard Scorching 100, however the track outgrew its chart place utterly. It has soundtracked The Sopranos, The Vampire Diaries, The Workplace, and Peter Pan. BBC 6 Music listeners voted it the perfect track between 2003 and 2012. Bono put it on an inventory of “60 Songs That Saved My Life” and wrote that he may “maintain onto it tighter than time.”
A track that by no means settles shouldn’t really feel like one thing to carry onto. That’s the unusual achievement of “Clocks.” Martin’s great-great-grandfather, a builder named William Willett, campaigned for British Summer time Time in 1916. The person couldn’t stand that folks have been sleeping via daylight. His descendant wrote successful about time closing in. Some issues run within the blood.
The track’s finest studying comes from a fan referred to as Terry within the Songfacts feedback part. Her daughter was born seven weeks early to “Clocks” taking part in on a hospital radio. “Proper when the tone of the track adjustments and Chris Martin sings ‘and nothing else compares’ is when she was born.” Not a chord. Not a solution. Simply the second the loop breaks.
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Coldplay Clocks Lyrics
Verse 1
The lights exit, and I can’t be saved
Tides that I attempted to swim in opposition to
Have introduced me down upon my knees
Oh, I urge, I urge and plead, singin’
Come out of issues unsaid
Shoot an apple off my head, and a
Bother that may’t be named
A tiger’s waitin’ to be tamed, singin’
Refrain
You might be
You might be
Verse 2
Confusion by no means stops
Closin’ partitions and tickin’ clocks, gonna
Come again and take you residence
I couldn’t cease, that you simply now know, singin’
Come out upon my seas
Cursed missed alternatives, am I
Part of the treatment?
Or am I a part of the illness? Singin’
Refrain
You might be
You might be
You might be
You might be
Refrain
You might be
You might be
Bridge
And nothin’ else compares
Oh, nothin’ else compares
And nothin’ else compares
Refrain
You might be
You might be
Outro
Dwelling, residence, the place I needed to go
Dwelling, residence, the place I needed to go
Dwelling(You might be)residence, the place I needed to go
Dwelling(You might be)residence, the place I needed to go
