Customer Reviews
Trancendental - By: Mr. I. W. Elliott, 14 Jun 2008 
Parachutes is still my favourit album from Coldplay. This album contributed to coldplays success with great songs Shivers, Yellow, High Speed, Everythings not lost. What can I say one of the best English bands ever.
great coldplay cd/album .. - By: kerriann, 05 Jun 2008 great cd/album , got all of there cd/albums & i think they are all just great , actually they are superb & just simply powerful -- thankyou coldplay ..
see u ..
Over hyped with not much much substance - By: Supersonic man, 24 Feb 2008 
The songs on this album are ok but that's it they are just mediocre. There are good musicians at work here but somehow the sum of their talents adds up to something which leaves me uninspired & untouched. There are better songs on "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" but Coldplay are still overrated. Best songs by far are "Trouble" & "Shiver" but download these. Don't waste your time & money listening to anything else off this album because it won't get your blood pumping. Good music to send you off to sleep though I suppose.
Classic, but not their best - By: D. A. Mcculloguh, 27 Jan 2008 
Emotionally unsettling & upliftingin equal measure, simple smart records are sometimes the best. Some of Coldplay's best work is here along with the souring choruses that they would perfect with the next album.
Chris Martins voice may lack the beauty of his counter parts but it works for his character, he feels vunrable & troubled & immediately identifiable that's exactly why Shiver was such an outstanding debut single. Slowly building momentum with guitars into a pure jam of uplifting chimes, only then does Chris begins crooning his tale of being unnoticed by someone whom he desires, it's a sad song, indeed & it impacts & gives you a cold shiver, similar if we must to Radiohead's Creep. Don't Panic a simple but serviceable opener feels a bit like Bitter Sweet Symphony without wings. `Spies' is probably the most interesting song on the album which like Shiver races to a climax of pure brilliance but not without first taking a murky look at the world. Sparks is a slow simple balladin an album not short of them & then we get to Yellow.
Amazingly I hadn't heard Yellow prior to buying the album & it was immediately on constant play, the perfect love song even with a somewhat random use of Yellow (my guess is personified joy). This happy number if followed by `Trouble' a tragic ballad of guilt & uncertainty set to a haunting piano riff (its funny Coldplay were known as the piano band & Keane just mere impostors when their debut & X&Y rarely use it) The title track is little more an interlude that a simple love poem followed by High Speed & We Never Change which are decent but not single material. The albums swan song is Everything is not lost a brilliant bad day song followed by a brief hidden track which isn't separated by a long time period (like some artists...)
So why only a 4? Mainly because the last quarter slips compared to the rest of the album, A Rush of Blood to the Head is so very much betterin every way for better quality of songs & consistency of good songs, fact is this is a must have album for anyone who likes emotional smart records.
"Theres nothing here to run from, cause everybody heres got somebody to lean on" - By: BD, 05 Sep 2007 7 years on & Parachutes still sounds great. The first time I ever heard of or saw Coldplay, was on the much missed channel 4 music show hosted by Jo Whiley. The video for `Yellow' was shown & I was hooked instantly "You know I love you so".
A lot of music fans at the time dismissed Coldplay as a poor Radiohead tribute act, but I always felt they owed more to the Verve (no bad thing & possibly benefited from their demise) but regardless of how derivative Coldplay were, `Parachutes' is possibly one of the finest debuts of the past 20 years. Coldplay hit the UK music scene just at the right time at the turn of the century, when British music wasin need of a boost following the end of the so called Brit Pop movement, & they delivered to those who took the time.
Compared to their later albums this is obviously their debut album. By that I mean it has degree of honesty about it, & there is less of a commercial feel to the sound that feels more personal to the band, which is fine by me. Highlights for me are `Don't Panic', `Shiver', `Spies', `Yellow', `Trouble', `Parachutes' & `Everything's not lost'. So that's 7 out of 10 tracks on a debut, hence the well deserved 5 stars.
Some would argue that Coldplay never topped this album, personally I am not sure about that as bands or artists record different style albums at different pointsin their career, so maybe that's a debate for a different review, but what I will recommend is that if you have discovered Coldplay via the massive selling `X+Y' album, get Parachutes & hear where it all began. A group of university lads finding their feet & producing inspiring musical brilliance. You won't be disappointed or fail to be touched by Parachutes.
