Rhino Factoids: Coldplay at the BRIT Awards

14 years ago today, Coldplay officially became a big deal on the British music scene by taking home the awards for both Best British Group and Best British Album – for Parachutes – at the 2001 BRIT Awards, a ceremony generally described as the UK equivalent of the Grammy Awards.

Now, when we say that they officially became a big deal that night, it’s not to say that Coldplay weren’t well on their way to achieving prominence on the pop charts. Indeed, by that point, they’d already secured two top-10 singles in the UK – “Yellow” (#4) and “Trouble (#10) – and Parachutes had long since proved to be an unqualified success. Still, there’s a whole new level of credibility that comes with being named Best British Group, and there’s little question that Coldplay took their new street cred and ran with it.

All told, Parachutes has sold so many copies as to earn placement within the UK’s list of the 20 biggest-selling albums of the 21st century, and not only did Channel 4 name it #25 on their list of the 100 Greatest Albums of All Time, but New Musical Express put it at #33 on their 2006 list of the 100 Greatest British Albums.

Oddly enough, however, the very year NME honored the album in such a fashion, Coldplay frontman said of their debut, “We know that’s terrible music, and we always try to think about what we can do next.” In fairness, though, this is as it should be when you consider the flip side of the equation: as Martin told The Daily Mail in 2001, “Normally any time we do something good we can rest assure there will be thousands of people who will happily tell us how bad it is.” So remember, kids: if you like it, Coldplay will hate it, and if Coldplay likes it, you might not.

Hey, nobody ever said pop music made sense.