A Rush of Blood to the Head

The opening track of this album was written on September 11, 2001, and recorded two days later. That is where the record begins, in the immediate aftermath of something too large to understand, a band of young men from London trying to make sense of a world that had just changed overnight.

They had every reason to play it safe. Their debut album had been a global success. "Yellow" had made them one of the biggest new bands on the planet. A record that sounded like more of the same would have sold just as well and no one would have blamed them for it.

Instead they scrapped everything, extended the recording sessions, had fights in the studio, threatened to quit, and kept pushing until they had something that felt worthy of the moment they were living in. Chris Martin has said he wanted to make an album that could sit alongside Radiohead's The Bends and U2's The Unforgettable Fire. That is an almost comically ambitious target for a second record.

They hit it.

"The Scientist" is a piano ballad of near-perfect construction. "Clocks" was added so late that it almost did not make the album, and it became one of the defining songs of the decade. "God Put a Smile upon Your Face" is Coldplay at their most urgent and electric. The whole record is built on piano and guitar in proportions that feel architectural, music that fills a room without forcing it.

This is the album that turned Coldplay from a promising band into something much larger. It holds up because the ambition was real.