Never in human f***ing history, since fish first slithered onto the f***ing land and sprouted limbs has there been a more nondescript f***ing decade than the f***ing Noughties and never has there been a more nondescript f***ing group than those gelatinous c***lords Coldplay! They made Dido sound like Bessie f***ing Smith! They filled the giant f***ing void in pop culture in the early 21st century because they are a giant f***ing void! Somehow, Martin’s knack for trudging up and down a keyboard like a middle aged man in f***ing chinos strolling to the f***ing corner shop to buy the f***ing Daily Express while singing like he’d just been kneed in the f***ing bollocks caught the zeitgeist of the dullest, do-nothing, think-wishfully generation of all f***ing time! In the rock & roll hall of fame they sit near the f***ing exit like a f***ing birch veneer occasional f***ing table! Getting excited about f***ing Coldplay is like getting excited about the f***ing Liberal Democrat Spring conference!
Anyway, Martin got married to f***ing Gwyneth Paltrow, that ghastly, gulping, giraffe-necked, sick-making long drink of carb-averse goop, they created their own f***ing hole in the f***ing ozone layer flying around the world with Martin warbling about how concerned they were about the f***ing environment, spawned a couple of sprogs and saddled them with life-ruining names, promoted every f***ing vapid strain of spiritual, anti-materialist New Age nonsense while raking in the f***ing ackers like whorehounds and then finally “consciously uncoupled”, though it’s a f***ing wonder either of them could stay f***ing conscious in each other’s company at all, given that they’re the two most testicle-achingly f***ing tedious people on earth! And now Chris is sad. He feels like shit. And he’s perfectly conveyed that unremittingly f***ing excremental condition on f***ing Ghost Stories!
So, track one ‘Always In My Head’ sets the f***ing dolorous tone. “I think of you/I haven’t slept.”, whines Martin, while f***ing George, Ringo and Ringo or whoever the f*** the other three are try not to fall asleep at their f***ing instruments. Next up, ‘Magic’. No, sorry, it’s not about actual magic. Tommy f***ing Cooper retrieving the f***ing ace of spades from a pack using a f***ing blindfolded wooden duck, not that. Nothing remotely entertaining. No, as f***ing ever, Chris Martin’s here to suck all the f***ing joy out of the room like a giant f***ing Happiness Hoover! A wan swirl of keyboards, like that pink water you get at the f***ing dentist’s swilling down a f***ing metal hole, and Chris is all about how he f***ing “can’t get over” you know who.
At which point you have to say: For f***’s sake, why, man? Gwyneth Paltrow no longer being in your life is like having a 14 inch long celery stick that’s been stuck up your arse for years surgically removed! You should be f***ing delirious! This album should be a series of f***ing honky-tonk piano-driven upbeat bangers with titles like ‘Wahoo!’ and ‘Thank F*** Almighty, Free At Last!’ and ‘I Don’t Have To Knit My Breakfast No More!’, all accompanied to the sound of six-shooters fired into the f***ing ceiling with both hands! All your f***ing friends hated her, were you not aware of that? But no, Chris is sad, so on we f***ing crawl through the cesspools of f***ing self-pity. “All I know is I love you/so much it hurts.” (yep, that stench coming from Stratford-Upon-Avon isn’t the drains, it’s f***ing Shakespeare shitting himself in his grave). I’d suggest you drown your f***ing sorrows, Chris, but it’d probably be best all round if you f***ing drowned yourself!
Next up; ‘True Love’, to a tune akin to watered down elephant smegma slowly dripping into a f***ing plastic bucket. “I wish you could have let me know/What’s really going on below.” No, kids, he doesn’t mean genitalia. Martin and Paltrow are like 1930s Disney nymphs, they don’t f***ing have genitalia. He means f***ing feelings, the c***. Cue also the worst, truncated f***ing guitar solo in f***ing history – like a dying kitten mewing for help, then remembering that this is a world with f***ing Coldplay in it and deciding not to f***ing bother. Now “Midnight” – and guess what? Chris is alone, alone. I’m not f***ing surprised. Any evening out with him’s gonna be a f***ing brief one, with mates making their excuses and back home in time for f***ing Channel 4 News!
‘Another’s Arms’ begins with an androgynous, anaemic yelp that is quite possibly the whitest moment in all of popular f***ing culture. Shirley f***ing Temple serenading the f***ing Ku Klux Klan with ‘White Christmas’ during a f***ing snowstorm could scarcely be any f***ing whiter. Next ‘Oceans’. Seriously, just f*** off, you insufferable f***ing streak of twatrot! ‘A Sky Full Of Stars’ breaks into a disco house groove but it’s funkless like a f***ing HSBC staff party – “wave your arms in the air, finish your f***ing mineral water and be back at your desks at 7.15 sharp tomorrow morning!” And so the album wends on – imagine Christ, instead of having to carry the f***ing cross to f***ing Calvary having to carry a giant, ten foot long flaccid penis instead – that’s how listening to this f***ing album feels by this stage!
Finally, the f***ing title track itself. Chris wonders if he himself is “just a ghost”. Tell you what, Martin, you woeful f***ing waste of a snail’s time, here’s one way of f***ing finding out – why not run into that f***ing brick wall head first? Twenty times, just to be f***ing sure?
There was another track but the f***ing CD physically f***ing evaporated before I could play it. Coldplay? C***grey, more like! There’s only one f***ing substance on this earth more colourless and full of f***ing nothing than Ghost Stories and that’s f***ing Gwyneth Paltrow’s urine!
Nominated by: Hurling Dervish