the sweet chord progression.

coldplay is releasing Strawberry Swing as a single, which is a bit frightening to me, because I remember what happened when they released Fix You as a single. 20-something year old girls who have no concept of what makes a song strong claimed it as their anthem and I began to hate it a little (and in fact it wasn't until their concert that I felt like I could enjoy it again). So I'm a little ashamed that I enjoy Coldplay as much as I do, especially because I claim to have good taste in music, but part of understanding what makes music powerful is understanding the emotional pull behind a piece of music.

For years and years people have been unwilling to give certain songs their due because of the simplicity of the message or the lyrics or the composition. But what these people forget is that sometimes all a song needs to be affecting is the right combination of chord progressions that will reach out and touch your soul a little bit.

Strawberry Swing has one such progression, in the finale of the song, and it gets me every time. My theory's not what it used to be and I'm not near a piano, so I don't know the exact chord sequence, but what I do know is that they combined a subtle minor chord with this idea of life only being worth it if you're there. It's not a With or Without You sort of idea. It's not possessive or controlling. In fact, it's completely without guile. Innocent. It's just...sweet.

I'm pretty certain that when I fall for someone that final time, this is going to be the melody playing through my mind.

And when you create that, you've created something powerful.

{they're also making this into a crazy music video a la Life In Technicolor}