Robbed hit of the week 9/26/22 - Coldplay's "Yellow"...

"Yellow" - Coldplay

from the album Parachutes (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #48

This week's "robbed hit" comes from the British modern rock band Coldplay, who came together in the late 1990's in London, shuffling through a myriad of band names before settling with Coldplay after completing the lineup of lead singer/guitarist Chris Martin, lead guitarist Jonny Buckland, bass player Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion. The group released their first EP Safety on their own before being distributed by the indie label Fierce Panda. A single from the short set, "Brothers & Sisters", popped on to the British Singles Chart for a week at #92 in 1999. After a successful stint at the Glastonbury music festival, Coldplay was signed to Parlophone Records, where they initially released a second EP, Blue Room, which contained an early version of a song, "Don't Panic", that would appear on their first full-length album Parachutes.

Parachutes was released in the summer of 2000 in their homeland, with the song "Shiver" as the lead single. The ode to unrequited love landed their first top-40 British hit at #35. But it would be their second try that would bring the band international success. "Yellow", written by Coldplay who produced the record with Ken Nelson, was supposedly inspired by a starry night of reflection on love, and the beauty from it. The music video puts Martin alone on a beach, as the color scheme goes from a bleak gray to brighter hues as the end...

"Yellow" stopped a couple of notches above the halfway mark on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart in May of 2001. The song rose to #6 on Billboard's Alternative Rock radio chart, #22 on the Mainstream Top-40, and nearly made the top ten at #11 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 list. Internationally, as the second single from Parachutes, the single went to #1 in Iceland, and reached the top ten in United Kingdom (#4), Australia (#5), and Ireland (#9). The Parachutes album, released in November of 2000 in the U.S., stopped at #51 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, but stayed on the list for 78 weeks, going on to sell over two million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2002, Parachutes won for Best Alternative Album. "Yellow" was also nominated in two categories, losing Best Rock Song to Train's "Drops Of Jupiter" and Best Duo/Group Rock Performance, which went to U2 for "Elevation".

As "Yellow" was peaking on pop radio, "Shiver" was promoted to rock radio, where it went to #26 on the Alternative Rock chart. "Trouble" was released worldwide as the third single; it "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #115, while reaching #23 on the Adult Top-40 format, #28 on the Alternative Rock chart, and #4 on the nascent Adult Album Alternative (or "Triple-A") Rock radio list. Internationally, the single scored a second #1 in Iceland and a second top ten placing in the UK at #10.

(8/10)

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Here's Coldplay performing an earlier version of the song on the British show Later...With Jools Holland in 2000....