Critics of the new Coldplay hit single ‘Hymn for the Weekend’ complain that it’s the old ‘Exotic India’ package in a new bottle – Holi, street kids, a cacophony of the usual sadhu-street performer combo.
Most critics don’t seem to have actually ‘heard’ the song – it’s about celebrating the intoxication of love
For those who haven’t really understood the lyrics (Coldplay songs are famed for needing a look at the lyrics sheet), the song is nothing spiritual, despite a first look indicating just that.
When Coldplay frontman Chris Martin first wrote 'Hymn for the weekend', it was a party anthem.
This is what band bassist Guy Berryman told the BBC: "It actually started off being quite a different vibe, this song… Chris was wanting to write a sort of party song. The words were 'Drinks on me, drinks on me.' And we said to him, 'You can't say that. You can't get away with that.' Then the whole story of the song changed…”
Isn’t this the kind of Make In India we can all enjoy?
It’s a song in the spectrum of joy, celebration and almost drunken abandon, something that no other festival but Holi symbolises for the world’s masses.
What would we rather have? Images of privileged Indians dancing in nightclubs?
The song isn’t a “real India”, “We-are-a-superpower” advertisement – this is Coldplay’s own artistic interpretation. And do they make us look bad? No. This IS what Mumbai’s slums look like, and yet no one is looking filthy, underfed or unwell. Still better than ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ where the entire world laughed at our , which India somehow celebrated.
Why not celebrate ‘Hymn for the weekend’?
Here's a black American woman in a Bollywood avatar, something Indians shouting about progressiveness have never themselves seen before?
And turns out these critics are a minority – India LOVES the song
So do people who have a say in the whole Indian aesthetics business
