Lead single, April 2005: piano riff, Kate Bush toms, first US Top 10
The piano figure repeats before the vocal even arrives. Then Will Champion’s tom pattern, borrowed in spirit from Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, pushes the verse forward while a synth pad holds the air. Speed of Sound was the lead single from X&Y: radio premiere on Steve Lamacq’s BBC Radio 1 show on 18 April 2005, digital release the next day, physical CD and vinyl in the UK on 23 May with B-sides Things I Don’t Understand and Proof. From the first chorus you hear why Parlophone led with it: big, clear, built to travel.
Chris Martin said the song came after listening to Bush and after the birth of his daughter Apple, chasing “awe and wonderment” with borrowings the band did not bother to hide. Guy Berryman confirmed they wanted those drums and chords and did not mind saying so. Produced with Danton Supple and the band, the track climbs into a chorus thick with guitars, bass, and synths. It peaked at number two in the UK, blocked by Crazy Frog’s novelty hit, and debuted at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, Coldplay’s first Top 10 in the US and the first British band to enter that chart’s top ten cold since the Beatles era. It was also cited as the billionth download purchased on the iTunes Store, a mid-2000s footnote that still says something about how far the single travelled.
Mark Romanek shot the video on a Los Angeles sound stage over two days in April 2005, with the band playing in front of a curved LED wall of hundreds of Element Labs tubes animated largely from Martin’s vocal stem. The clip drew MTV VMA nominations and heavy rotation. Years later Martin cooled on the song, telling interviewers they “never got it right” and that audiences sense when a band is unconvinced. Live performances became rarer even as the single remained a radio fixture, which only sharpens the paradox: a hit the band half-disowned that still defines the album’s public face.
We were really trying to recreate the drums on that song for this song, and the chords. Some bands are reluctant to admit that they take things from other artists… and we’re shameless in that respect.
(Guy Berryman, on borrowing from Kate Bush)
Awards followed: Brit Award for Best British Single in 2006, ASCAP Song of the Year, Grammy nominations for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group. For many listeners in summer 2005 it was the first fully finished taste of X&Y before the album landed in June.
Play Speed of Sound again and the piano still cues the era. The tom pattern still does the Kate Bush work. Whether or not Martin still loves it, the single did the commercial job: open the album campaign, crack the US Top 10, and leave a LED-soaked image stuck to mid-2000s television. Press play for that entrance and the chorus that sold the widescreen Coldplay to America.
