Okay, so my upcoming wedding is looming as large on the horizon as the USS Eisenhower, and so the fiancee and I start buckling down and going over the small issues. For example, songs we want played at the wedding.
Well, I’ve had plenty of people tell me about how beautiful Coldplay’s “Yellow” is, and I’ve heard it enough to agree that the melody and the singing work beautifully together. And the lyrics seem to be very romantic.
But the thing my fiancee can’t get over- and it’s starting to confuse me, as well- what the heck does “and it was all yellow” mean, anyways? That it was happy? That it was sunny and bright? That it was slightly jaundiced?
So I throw the question out to the great Teeming Millions- what the hell does “it was all yellow” mean?
That song, assuming it’s the one I’m thinking of, will always be associated with the ABC network for me. It was the theme for their big campaign last year, and you couldn’t turn around without hearing it. Especially if you went to a Disney park – I was at MGM Studios in Florida, and then the new California Adventure park in Anaheim, and you couldn’t go 10 minutes without hearing it.
So just be forewarned; it might have another connotation for people that you didn’t expect…
I’m looking at the lyrics right now. At the beginning of the song, the singer describes the stars and sees that they are beautiful and for the rest of the song everything good is yellow.
Yellow is warm and bright. It has the power to change anything into something beautiful.
You’re looking to play this song at your wedding - does that mean at the reception when everyone is dancing? In the wedding itself? Your first dance?
Just to clarify.
I think it’s a great song (on a pretty good album) and would love to hear it at the reception. I’m not sure I’d be in favor of picking it as a song that “has meaning” at a wedding (i.e. first dance), especially if you’re not familiar with it. Seems better to pick a song you know and love rather than take a chance for something special.
The Dido song is good, too! I like that album as well.
Well, the different times the word “yellow” is referred to, I’ve taken it to mean different things. In referrence to the stars, self-explanatory, they’re shiny, yellow, so forth. But later on, the yellow Coldplay is referring to in the lines about the past relationship, I’ve always got the feeling that it means “discolored…” that is, imperfect. That the relationship the singer was engaged in was flawed somehow. However, that is just my opinion and I could be so far out in left field that I’m in the parking lot, but hey, it’s my two cents.
And even if that is the meaning–who cares? No one has a perfect relationship, and making the realization that nobody’s perfect but that you still have a willingness to “bleed yourself dry” for them sounds like it might be just the sort of statement you’d like your song to make. At any rate, the song is very beautiful, and congratulations.
Amazing. One line in the song corresponds to that interpretation (full lyrics). It’s worth noting that the rest of the song–and come to think on it, the rest of the Coldplay catalogue–doesn’t vaguely seem to concern cocaine or anything so sinister at all.
I tried to find stuff to back up your argument. This U.S.A Today article says that Chris Martin came up with a “no cocaine rule.” In this MTV.com article he makes a joke about cocaine, but that’s it.
Anyway, it’s a perfectly innocent love song. I’d go for something less overplayed, but it’s still a fine choice.
I read an interview with Chris Martin where he said that he does not drink, does not do drugs, and didn’t even have sex until after the success of Yellow. So I think we can probably assume that its unlikely he would write a song like that about cocaine. Just the way he sings “I drew a line for you”… it sounds a lot more deep than snorting cocaine. I think it is a great song to use for a wedding, go for it.
Except, that to many people this will just bring to mind images of an obsessed fan-boy who kills his girlfriend and suicides by driving his car off a bridge, all the while rapping to his favourite artist about it.
Maybe I have an undue tendency to see darkness where there is none, but I always took Yellow to be a song of bitter recrimination for a failed love affair.
Not that there’s anything so dark about the lyrics, but “drawing lines” for someone, and “bleeding (oneself) dry” aren’t the most cheerful of images.
