“Viva La Vida” by Coldplay

"Viva la Vida" is the title track and centerpiece of Coldplay's fourth album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, released as its second single in the spring of 2008, and it's the sound of a band deliberately leaving its comfort zone. The song marches on a looping string figure, played by Davide Rossi, and a digitally treated piano, with new layers piling on as it goes. The band wrestled with it through several styles until a church bell rang in, and Chris Martin knew they had it.

All four members wrote it, and the lyric is a fallen king's lament, a ruler who has lost his throne looking back on revolution, laced with nods to Louis XVI, the French Revolution and Saint Peter. The title comes from Frida Kahlo's last painting, which Martin saw at her museum in Mexico. Markus Dravs, Brian Eno, Jon Hopkins and Rik Simpson produced, with Eno adding synthesizer and backing vocals.

It gave Coldplay their first number-one single in both Britain and America and won the Grammy for Song of the Year in 2009. Hype Williams directed the main video, with the band playing in front of a blurred version of Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People; an alternate clip paid tribute to Anton Corbijn's video for Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.