Once upon a time, there was a little girl with a passion for the album X&Y.

It was the year 2005 and my father had taken a long trip to Holland because of work, and when he came back, he left a small, green-ish gray box on top of my night table, next to my CD player, that said, “X&Y, Special Dutch Edition”.

(I was 10 at the time, and my idea of music was reduced to Hilary Duff’s final album “Most Wanted”, that my godmother had randomly bought for me, even though I had never mentioned Hilary).

I came home from school one day, got my Sony cassette and (rejoice! how modern!) CD player, sat on the wooden floor and played track one. Track one, track two, three, four, until I had to skip to the second CD. I fell in love with X&Y. I didn’t know english, and so I couldnt understand the lyrics nor learn them, and yet somehow I listened to it and thought, “this is what I want to do. I want to make this music. I don’t know who this is but I want to be like them”. 

I can recall many days cutting out my coloured pictures listening to Speed of Sound, A Message, Sleeping Sun, Swallowed in the sea… They became my definition of good music.

Nearly 7 years after that day when she played X&Y for the first time, that same girl that used baby scissors sitting on the floor while listening to their third album, stood up in the middle of a crowd, in the rain, watching Coldplay present their new album Mylo Xyloto in her very own city. And she danced, and waved, and cried, and sand along in the cold, and watched the fireworks in awe as Hurts Like Heaven started and Every Teardrop is a Waterfall ended. And whispered to the girl next to her as Chris got on the piano and sang Fix You, “this is beautiful. Just beautiful”. 

Once upon a time, there was a little girl with a passion for the album X&Y.

(27.10.11)