Never Ending Forever Baby

Coldplay featuring BTS “My Universe”

Coldplay has maintained commercial relevance for a very long time now, and a lot of that is because the band have worked very hard to maintain their position as one of the world’s most popular rock bands. But anyone can want to do that, the interesting thing about Coldplay is that as they’ve adapted to the whims of the pop market they’ve always sounded exactly like themselves. Some of this comes down to Chris Martin having a pleasant and immediately recognizable voice, but it’s more about how he is a nearly unrivaled expert in writing uplifting and romantic songs that make a listener feel like they’re living in a movie. There’s always going to be a space in pop culture for the sort of feelings Martin evokes, and as it turns out it works just as well in the context of ecstatic festival EDM as it did when they were working the U2 Junior lane.

Teaming up with BTS was a brilliant move both commercially, in that doing a song featuring the K-pop icons was basically a guaranteed hit, and artistically in that there probably is no Western rock band with an aesthetic that could fuse with BTS so seamlessly. “My Universe” is bright and bouncy and overflowing with a very earnest love. This song is the unashamed extreme of the nearly psychotic optimism and melodramatic movie romance that characterizes all their major works. BTS’ presence intensifies the wholesomeness of the song, balancing out Martin’s middle aged corniness with a more youthful guilelessness. It’s sorta miraculous for a song that’s essentially the merger of two powerful corporate brands to sound as devoid of cynicism as this does.

Buy it from Amazon.