Low

"Low"
General information
Recorded	2003-2005
Genre	Alternative rock Space rock Post-punk
Length	5:32
Labels
Producer(s)	Ken Nelson Danton Supple
Album	X&Y
X&Y track listing
"A Message"
"Low"
"The Hardest Part"

"Low" is a song by Coldplay from their third studio album, X&Y. It is the ninth track of the album and is part of the Y side.

Background and recording

In a track by track interview for Q Magazine, Chris Martin said the song was a "turning point" in X&Y’s making process, explaining: "We had this piece we'd written on tour in Zurich and I'd listened to it on my computer and think, ‘that's a great thing’. And then I was in San Diego, and just as I was leaving the hotel, I had this idea, so I went to the lobby piano and worked out these chords. And then we booked ourselves into a tiny rehearsal space and we all got such a buzz from playing that it made us realise we had gone wrong on the recordings of all the other songs. I realised last August that I was missing everyone else and "Low" was what brought us back together."

The song features Brian Eno, who would later produce the following album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, playing the backing synthesizers. About Eno's involvement on the track, Jonny Buckland said: "Eno came in, he just said “Can I come round?” He just came in with these plastic bags with this weird equipment in and he said “Can you feed me some of these keyboards” and he sort of bounced around the room making them sound weird! And then left."

Chris also said in other interview the song was designed to be a headphone song, adding: "[The] song sounds like a massive picture of tons and tons of different things and in the heart of it is a song, but really it's about the whole. I think that's a slightly musicaly nerdy that song because visits quite indulgent around half [...] The song's where Brian Eno appears very briefly and it's a song where we said "let's buy all these wine glasses and hit" and that's what they were hitting and we just [...] played all the studio games on that... So, if you played on every song it turns out rubbish."

Will Champion confirmed the use of crystal wine glasses for the percussion part of the song.

Composition

The sound of the song was compared to that of post-punk artists such as U2, David Bowie and Interpol, as also being described as space rock with an "unexpected burst of supersized psychedelia".

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You see the world in black and white
No color or light
You think you'll never get it right
But you're wrong, you might
The sky could fall, could fall on me
The parting of the seas
But you mean more, mean more to me
Than any color I can see

[Chorus]
All you ever wanted was love
But you never looked hard enough
It's never gonna give itself up
All you ever wanted to be
Living in perfect symmetry
Nothing is as down or up as us
As us

[Verse 2]
You see the world in black and white
Not painted right
You see no meaning to your life
You should try
You should try

[Chorus]
All you ever wanted was love
But you never looked hard enough
It's never gonna give itself up
All you ever wanted to be
Living in perfect symmetry
Nothing is as down or up as us

[Bridge]
And don't you wanna see it come soon
Floating in a big white balloon
Or given on your own silver spoon
Don't you wanna see it come down
There for throwing your arms around
And say "you're not a moment too soon"

[Outro]
Cause I feel low
Cause I feel low
Oh oh oh oh oh
Yeah I feel low
Oh no, oh
Oh cause I feel low
Cause I feel Low
Oh oh oh oh oh
But I feel low
Oh no, oh, oh

Official Audio

Low

Critical Reception

In a ranking of the band's entire discography, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the release of Parachutes, NME praised the track describing it as "an emotionally charged number that only intensifies over five-and-a-half absorbing minutes, with Chris Martin hollering “'cause I feel low” as the song reaches its climax." Dan Tallis of BBC called the song as one of the highlights of the album, saying it is "perhaps the most frantic song they've recorded". The Berlin Sun said the song "offers the most overt nod to Coldplay’s post-punk influences, with Buckland’s precision rhythms and fills a timely highlight."

Trivia

• Faith Holmes, video commissioner at EMI, said she was on an campaign at the time to get a video made for the song but it was "looking less likely".