Coldplay

Across a career more than twenty years long, Britain’s Coldplay have recorded and toured regularly. Forming in London in 1996, the band signed to prestigious Parlophone label, releasing their debut album Parachutes (and monster single "Yellow") in mid-2000. Every album from that release onwards has reached the top of the charts in the UK, and done almost as well in other countries. It’s fair to say that the band are one of the most popular and consistently successful of the twenty-first century.

Managing to bridge pop and rock, mainstream and indi, Coldplay have sometimes been compared to U2, and have—perhaps not surprisingly—attracted similar criticisms of being formulaic and rather earnest. None of that worries their legion of fans, however, who have watched the videos (Coldplay have released sixty-five of those), attended the concerts (and bought the four live albums) and applauded their numerous contributions to charity recordings and events.