Green Eyes

The first time you listen to Green Eyes, you're struck by that acoustic guitar that opens and closes the song like a frame. There are no explosive choruses or abrupt changes: it's an intimate ballad where Chris Martin's voice and the guitar arpeggio carry the song almost halfway through, until the other instruments enter gently. What surprises most when playing it is how the song returns to the beginning without warning, as if time folded back on itself. Live, Coldplay usually speeds it up a bit, but on the album the slow tempo gives it that air of a song meant to be listened to up close, not to fill stadiums.

The lyrics were born as a gift for an ex-partner — the song's title comes from her green eyes — and although Martin composed it before 2002, he never performed it in public when he started dating Gwyneth Paltrow. As he later explained, it was like an old pair of pants that no longer fit: he preferred to play Moses, the song he did dedicate to her. The track ended up as the seventh song on A Rush of Blood to the Head, an album that marked a shift in the band's sound: here, electric guitars and piano gained space over the minimalism of Parachutes. Recorded between the success of Yellow and the album's release, the song lasted 3:43 and was mixed by Ken Nelson, Mark Phythian, and the band itself. In Germany, it appeared on a special single of Clocks alongside a seconds-long rarity called Mooie Ellebogen, and in Australia they released a promo with only this track. Nothing more.