Extra, extra! Read all about it! Coldplay found the most extra way to reveal the track list for their upcoming double album (also extra, for the record) and, no, it’s not just an elaborate Instagram post. The band placed a classified ad with the title, track list, and release date in newspapers across the globe. Papers in Australia, France, New Zealand, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom showed the ad, some retaining Coldplay’s format and others replacing it with their own. The new project, titled Everyday Life, is actually two albums in one: Sunrise and Sunset. According to their ads, Sunrise will feature songs “Sunrise,†“Church,†“Trouble In Town,†“BrokEn,†“Daddy,†“WOTW / POTP,†“Arabesque,†and “When I Need A Friend.†As for Sunset: “Guns,†“Orphans,†“Èkó†(the Yoruba word for Lagos), “Cry Cry Cry,†“Old Friends,†“بنی آدم†(bani adam in Arabic, meaning “mankindâ€), “Champion of the World,†and “Everyday Life.â€
The track lists are very sorority girl before and after she went to Nigeria and came back with a tapestry, a hunger for jollof, and a new lease on life. Big study-abroad energy. The band has previously been accused of cultural appropriation, for example, with the song “Princess of China.†We’ll find out if Everyday Life adds to that tradition when it drops on November 22. The old-fashioned ink-and-paper track-list reveal echoes Coldplay’s decision to send typewritten album announcements to fans. (They did, ultimately, post it on Instagram themselves, so really what difference did it make?) Soon, all these tiny baby clues are hopefully going to come together to make a banging Coldplay album and not some sort of Goop stationery collab.