If you haven’t realized by now, Coldplay’s colorful new album cover contains a marketing gimmick secret code! A global promo campaign will likely reveal clues in the coming weeks.
Initially I thought it was some Arecibo message, Sagan stizz … but maybe it’s just baby Apple’s favorite color combination. Please hazard a guess in the comments. The cleverest answer will win the admiration of your fellow blog readers.
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%s1 / %s2
i dunno. but I’m sure they ripped up off of kraftwerk.
Maybe they’re her Duplo blocks.
ripped *it* off of K.
damn. it would’ve been funny, i swear.
coldplay sucks a dick.
This is what I see when I try to play Breakout on my old Atari 2600. Until I put my glasses on.
I thought that it was a very rough picture of baby Apple… done up like the Apple logo. I also think it’s retarded.
Looks like a New Order cover if I’ve even seen one.
i think it says, “that difficult third album.”
It’s the phrase Chris Martin uttered backstage one night that let him bang Gwyneth Paltrow.
It probably says “Free Trade” or something “deep” like that.
Its the lead chord progression for Ted Nugents song Scream Dream
what’s with the kaleidoscope of colors? is that a gay pride thing?
It’s what’s left of Gwyneth’s Visa card after a weekend spree at Babys’R'Us
Hahaha….
Awesome, the lot of you.
Keep ‘em coming.
It’s clearly a graphical demonstration of the famous mathematical equation:
Making asexual pop “music” = Banging asexual pop culture “icon”
I think it’s something Beck doodled on a napkin and left in a bar, and then Chris Martin picked it up off the floor.
Music, non-stop…techno-pop.
or
Dude, seriously, make trade fair.
It’s E.T. falling in a pit after being chased by FBI agents through Greek ruins.
It kinda looks like a gay E.T. from the Atari 2600 version of the game.
Damn, William….Great minds and all….
It’s mean ole Chris sitting on some stairs with his hands raised so that his voice can be louder. He’s yelling out to tell me he’s sorry for turning me down when I asked him for a picture after a concert. Dude, I’m a 5ft. chick who looks like a 12yr old nerd. He couldn’t even pity me!
Once decoded, it spells out “Bovs on your effin tees, I’m an extraordinary machine.”
It’s an 8-bit representation of Will Ferrell hitting the beer bong
margaret thatcher.
Sideways, it looks like Chris Martin’s white-tipped penis is about to plunge into Gwyneth’s gaping baby-maw.
Or the pope. It’s the pope, back from the dead!
I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure Radiohead did it first.
power corruption & lies, part deux
a man being shanghaied by a high hat beaver mustache man and his pirate friend..he woke up in vomit and beer
looks like a bottle of perfume or that thing that fills up gas…
anyways, colored dna scans or chromosomes. whatever. anything that has to do with the album title x&y
well…if you cross your eyes…look at it for a bit, and then slowly uncross them..it’s like one robot thingy sliding up to the other robot thingy…maybe he’s trying to catch him [before he spends twenty bones on a coldplay cd]
Uhm, anyone else care/find it interesting that Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan apparently found Jesus and has become born again?
It looks like a level from the classic arcade game, “Arkanoid”!
looks like a hand holding a gun. like the cover of ride’s tarantula.
It’s probably a fuckin’ IPod.
it looks like some kind of fragrance bottle for the gays
maybe it’s just the alcoholic in me talking, but i see a bottle of liquor. any kind of liquor. all kinds of liquor. mmmmmm….liquor…
If Maynard Keenan has found Jesus, he should start a band called A Perfect Tool. Frickin’ idiot. Hope this is a huge hoax.
Its the colors of Gwenyth’s new awards dress
It says, “I used to be a werewolf, but I’m feeling much better nowwwwooooohhhhhOOOOOO!”.
Atari 2600.
Yar’s Revenge.
Game over.
“More cowbell.”
Is the album called “Tetris”? (If not, I suggest “Nutless Wonder”).
Its an Absolute Ad.
Absolute Ass.
Perhaps someone finally developed an Atari game based on the cover art of Radiohead?s ?Hail to the Thief?. Or perhaps Martin thought the multicolor pixilation was slightly more clever than when he drew a line, he drew a line for you, oh what a thing to do, and it was all yellooooow?
The Maynard thing was an April Fool’s joke in the band’s website that MTV has now taken as real.
That looks like something I created in computer class in 8th grade on an Apple IIc, which required me to hand code all the pixels. Ah….the good old days.
PS — or its a modern art rendering of a Joshua Tree.
Coldplay’s new album: sponsered by Ikea.
It’s the picture of what a once uniquely intimate band used to look like before they sold their souls to the mediocre mainstream devil.
i agree with the guy who said it looked like a new order cover.
It looks straight from the peter saville school of graphic design/12″ covers
It definitely looks like a second rate Peter Saville New Order cover.
Compare for yourself:
http://www.cerysmaticfactory.info/neworderdiscog.html
it’s a vagina
Its a large mosiac of music snobs indulging in there favorite past-time, pandering to the lowest common denominator by hating on 2-sensational-album hit band, all the while further pushing their hero-worship of Martin into the recesses of their brain that is only revisited with a jar of K-Y and a black biker cap.
It’s a Rabbit.
It’s a complex menagerie of the sperm with both chromosomes X & Y that were shoved into Gwyneth to produce a female ‘Apple.’ :] Man, DNA is colorful under a microscope…
It is a zygote being fertilized. Duh
It does look like a pixel-ized ultrasound of a baby… apple-style… whatever it is, it’s obviously something that Gwyneth had to okay (remember Mr. Chris “Vote-for-Kerry-because-Gwynnie-told-me-to-say-that” Martin-Paltrow?).
Maybe they should have named the album “iSuck@rippingoffRadioHead3.0″
http://blissfullyclueless.blogspot.com/
Probably getting all political and spearing the Homeland Security Advisory Threat Levels
It’s Cockney slang for “At least it looks different…”
Coldplay and blogs don’t mix. Blogs are all about calling the next big thing. When you report Coldplay news to a bunch of scenesters pining for future “I told you so”‘s, of course the reactions are going to be cheap shots.
What I like about Stereogum is that it is dedicated to music instead of indie-cred retention. Why don’t all you bitchy scenester’s take your complaints over to the forums at pitchforkmedia ?
It’s a bunch of squares, cause it’s hip to be a square.
maybe we need to try to put it in negative colors, black&white or something, oh! how about staring 30secs at the image and then blink like you have something in your eye but in a white wall :> like the jesus image… it would be creepy to find something in there. Use your imagination!! i’m out of ideas… my ideas suck! but Coldplay rocks!!! =D
is it tetris?
apple’s succesful dna paternity test?
the colour code says x&y
there album name, go to this link make your own colour codes
http://www.coldplace.co.uk/xygen.asp
Perhaps it resembles apples turd after he ate a box of crayolas…
ET’s a son of a bitch.
Something sort of a Chris Burke masterpiece….
It’s what he does in his free time when he’s not pretending he has down syndrome on “life goes on”
Does anyone enjoy Hall & Oates in their leisure time?
this makes me want to pour hot Jumbalaya on my crotch!
I am eating a manwich in my BVD’s thinking about the good old days.
My landlord looks like chuck norris.
Maybe this artwork masterpiece was created by Chuck Norris….
would’nt suprise me…
that Son of a bitch
I would like to publicly take credit for this genius masterpiece.
When i am not bowflexing in my zebra bannana hammock I create digital, images such as the masterpeice above.
My red hair inspired me to create this paticular peice.
As you can see it depicts my inner feelingsof rage, despair & horny ness for Star Jones.
It looks to me, if I may, like a corporate whore wondering why its being replicated three million times. Speed of Sound is the same melody as Clocks. Chris Martin has too much Apple on the brain. Let’s dig up Ian Curtis!
It´s a mathematical abstraction wich brings the old fashioned covers of classical records of rock/pop histry
My guess is- this picture is genetic code, or the way DNA lines up within a gene.
-Dave
Check out my site- my songs don’t really sound anything like Coldplay-
http://www.davesunshine.com
it just looks like a dude sitting down with shit going on his head.
It looks like a hand holding a gun…the colorful part looks like a clenched fist, and the grey part looks like a gun.
The mystery has been solved in today’s Guardian.
The cover uses a code developed in 1870 by Emile Baudot to represent letters and numbers as a series of five digit numbers.
Translated, it reads: “Cheque’s in the post, Mr Saville”.
… Sorry, that should read “the title of the album, X&Y”. The cover represents four columns of five-digit binary numbers – the colours are irrelevant.
See http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,,1496680,00.html for further details.
probably somethin to do with chromosones, hence the title X & Y
Well. all i got to say : DIE CHUCK NORRIS !
Baudot code but I believe it should have had another
line for a reset after the “&” character (11111)
hope this helps on their corrected cover ;)
Is this all yall do is talk shit thats so lame why be jealous of someone who makes so much money than you and whos better looking than you. i think people who talk shit about others are very insecure with themselves. how old r u?
In 1870, Emile Baudot devised a system for telegraphists to represent each letter of the alphabet by a string of five 0s or 1s. The letter X was represented by 10111 and Y by 10101. The first column of colours on the cover shows a black and grey block representing a 1, followed by a gap representing a zero, then three more blocks of colour giving three 1s. The first letter in Coldplay’s title is the letter X. The last column gives us 10101 or the letter Y.
So what about the middle two columns? Five 0s and 1s can represent 2x2x2x2x2=32 different characters. This is rather limiting if numbers and punctuation are to be included in the code. Baudot decided to use one of the strings of 0s and 1s to denote a shift key. The symbol following the shift key could then come from an alternative set of characters, just as the shift key on a keyboard offers access to new symbols.
The second column of colours represents Baudot’s shift key, 11011. The third column of colours becomes the new symbol &. All four columns combine to disclose the title: X & Y.
The front cover says X&Y
The last page in the book says Make Trade Fair
It’s a 19th-century telegraphic code known as the Baudot Code, or The International Telegraph Code Number One. It was used in teletype machines in the late 1800s.
It says, “X and Y.” The rainbow colors are there just to make it pretty.
Darn I thought I was so smart but coldplayfan24 got it. the first page is X&Y and the last page is Make trade Fair.
I know it’s a image of a tetris game that went horribly wrong either that or they just decided to draw some boxes and thought hey that looks cool
it’s a 19th-century telegraphic code known as the Baudot Code, or The International Telegraph Code Number One. It was used in teletype machines in the late 1800s. The rainbow colors are there just to make it pretty. A message on the back of the liner notes says, “Make Trade Fair.” The band is politically active, and lists several Web sites in the liner notes at which fans can get involved in global affairs.
It’s a pound Sterling symbol meaning that they’re going to screw you suckers for loads’a'money…
It’s obvious to dorks. It’s bianary code read from top down. Colors are irrelevant
on off on on on = X
on on off on on = shift
off off off on on = 7
on off on off on = Y
thus it says X and Y in binary code
For anyone who has purchased the album, the master code is listed inside the jacket label. It is a combination of color blocks that each represent a letter of the alphabet.
i think the covers cool. It says X&Y in binary code if u didn’t notice. duh!
A difficult level of Tetris…
the green bands (=) are the make trade fair logo
I think chris Martin is Fucking fit. You lot a bunch of wankers.!!!!!!!!!!!!!
the happens to be a binary code “index” in the middle of the booklet.
That’s awesome to learn about the X&Y binary coded message and the incorporated green equal sign (=) for fair trade, but the rainbow collage on the bottom ALSO clearly forms the basic shape and color scheme of an old-fshioned rainbow Apple logo from the 70s and 80s. (We already know he has some sort of infatuation with Steve Jobs’ brainchild, since he named his daughter Apple.)
I’ve never thought much of the band, but this image is ingenious.
I dont understand why people dont like Coldplay. Their songs are so relaxing and although Chris’s voice isnt spectacular it’s still very touching and good.
i think coldplay are amazing!! dont dis! the cover rocks!! love emma
Or it just says x&y you stupid fags.
And the back one says “make fair trade”
Wow, lets make fun of a band that cares about something!!
idiots.
It reminds me of when me and my Aunt Hilda used to play “find the teacup in the bedsheet”.really.