1. A Rush Of Blood To The Head (2002)
When you're trying to weigh the overall merits of an album, there are two simple categories you have to consider: 1) How many tracks that are single-worthy, and 2) How it feels listening to the whole thing straight through. A Rush of Blood to the Head is an album chock full of singles material that plays just as well today as it did when it was first released. Despite the band's reticence to embrace critic's comparisons to Radiohead, there's little doubt that they followed similar paths in their discography. The Bends was made to prove that Radiohead was capable of more than "Creep," while A Rush of Blood to the Head triumphantly cast aside notions that Coldplay would be eternally be merely "that 'Yellow' band." Indeed, "Yellow" feels like the distant past after this album wraps up. In the course of 11 enlivened, confident songs, Coldplay forged a new identity. It would be one that set a high bar for the rest of their career, for better or for worse. How do you top the slinky, sexual "God Put A Smile Upon Your Face"? Certainly not with "Paradise." How do you make fans move beyond the pure, stadium-ready heartbreak contained in "The Scientist"? You can give them "Fix You," but that won't be enough. And how the hell do you make guitar-driven, psychedelic rock that's better than "A Whisper"? You don't. You simply have to deal with peaking early in your career and hope the good will you've earned from that album will be enough to carry you for another decade-plus. Luckily for Coldplay, it did.