People still can’t comprehend how Coldplay’s The Scientist was actually sung backwards
Sometimes a song is just so good that you don’t even realize the little things about it that you may have missed.
It’s kind of like when you’re into a song’s beat and you then sing along aimlessly without paying attention, and then discover the true meaning behind the lyrics of a song that is absolutely shocking.
Looking at you, Flo Rida's Whistle.
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Not unlike that whole revelation, social media users have also made a discovery about a certain Coldplay song from 2002 and its accompanying video.
The hit is called the 'The Scientist' and it shows Chris Martin, the lead singer, walking backwards through some crazy scenes, which feels like it would be impossible.
Well, it would and that’s why the music video was shot in reverse.
Reverse motion was used for the video, meaning Martin had to learn how to sing the lyrics backwards, which still blows people’s minds to this day.
The video’s director, Jamie Thraves, explained to MTV back in 2003 that he wanted to riff off the lyric ‘back to the start’, which is why he used reverse motion to move Martin back to the scene of the car crash that killed his on-screen girlfriend.
And footage of a noughties interview in which the singer demonstrates his new-found ability to sing backwards has resurfaced on social media - and people are just as impressed as ever.
Beneath the clip, one person commented: “Damn, the dedication to have learned the whole song backwards just to bring that idea to fruition! Must have taken weeks of trial and error. Mad respect.”
Another person added: “Wow, never seen anything about him singing it in reverse before!”
While a third penned: “I mean, he can even sing his songs backwards, so beat that every other celebrities.”
“You know you really love your own songs when you can sing them backwards,” wrote someone else, with a fifth adding: “Blown away.”
Thraves added: “I had this idea that I wanted to do a story that's tragic but starts off happy and ends happy, and the video is about rewinding to that happy ending."
He continued: "The original idea was a straight narrative without the lead singer in the video. But Chris wanted to be in the video and he was really excited to learn how to sing the song backward.”
Thraves went on: "He got a tape of the song recorded backward and he listened to it over and over. He's a very passionate guy, so he got really into it.
“What we learned later on is about the problems with phonetics, because you have to be very careful with the lip movement so that when you end on a sound your mouth is formed in the right way."
Well, at least that has been cleared up.
Britt Jones