Thought this was funny...and a little annoying:
Which is the best band in the world?
Chris Martin reckons Coldplay are 'the seventh best band in the world'. But is it even possible to measure who is number one?
June 9, 2008 10:00 AM
It's one thing to announce you're "the fourth best band in Hull", as the Housemartins did with a nod and a wink more than 20 years ago. It's another to claim, as Chris Martin has done without any apparent irony, that "Coldplay is only the seventh best band in the world". It's all false modesty, one suspects, for underneath that self-effacing exterior lurks a man with an almost psychotic belief in his own talents - remember his insistence that Coldplay's X&Y was going to be "bonkersly brilliant"? So the statement that Coldplay are "only" the seventh best band really means this: there are only a handful of groups who can compete with us; the rest are no-hopers.
It's all nonsense, of course. Martin says Arcade Fire and Sigur Rós are the best bands in the world, which suggests he has a very limited view of what defines great rock music. Like Coldplay, both bands deal in melancholy that serves, paradoxically, to provide uplift. Put it another way: like Coldplay, they're epic and bombastic. So if you're playing dirty blues rock, you won't be in the Chris Martin Musical Premier League; ditto if you play pastoral folk, brash pop or cool dance-punk. Even Noel Gallagher might be more open-minded than that.
There's simply no way to assess the best group in the world. Record sales? No, not unless you're willing to accept that the soundtrack to The Bodyguard - the seventh bestselling album ever - is the seventh best album of all time. Awards? Come on, no one takes the Brits and Grammys as gospel. Influence? How do you calculate that?
But if you're still seeking the truth, there's one question that offers it. Ask yourself this: what's your favourite band? There you go. That's the best band in the world, and don't let Chris Martin tell you otherwise.