Oh dear God! Chris Martin is bringing a child into the world...

Anyway, a wee fact for you here - a friend of mine's wife went to university with Chris Martin and tells me that when he first started the band the record company wanted him to wear braces and he did. His appearance and how he presents himself was controlled by the record company even then.

a chilling vision of things to come.

As for the braces thing - Dido's are actually false* so it's not a big deal

*probably not true

Well I'm not the best person to ask (ask someone gay or a girl surely?)... but I just don't see Chris Martin as someone that would get a lot of women were he not in a successful pop band. Same with Ian Brown or Liam Gallagher.

My ex said Chris Martin was good looking though, and told me Brett Anderson was not. So maybe I know nothing.

Except for its boring cynicism.

I just honestly, really do not know.

perhaps if you were to take away all the people you think are ugly, then the remainder are the people you think are good looking

Robbie Williams, I guess, does not.

But that does not mean I can say one is better looking than the other because I'm attracted to neither. Does that make sense?

you dont have to be attracted to either to know that one is better looking. surely you have just highlighted that it is possible to know that one is better looking than the other, without being attracted to either

perhaps this is an awareness of the opinions of society and what others think. it is not hard to be intuitive about these things.

i mean, you have just said that you think that robbie is better looking than chris. so, you are able to distinguish.

with you and your friends, surely you are able to distinguish who are the better looking ones, who the girls talk to etc etc

ie, it is pointless to say liam wouldnt get girls if he wasnt in oasis, as any pisshole indie club in camden with liam-a-likes with swedish girls hanging off them shows. faux-swagger is all it takes

*admittedly, getting swedish girls in camden is about as hard as walking in a straight line, but thats not really point

"Except for its boring cynicism."

Boring cynicism offends ILM now? Awwww man!

c-man = chris martin?

Money?

C-Man, i don't have any hate 4 u like a lot of posters, but are you quite sure about this? Why was wearing braces a Good Thing To Do back in 99/00???????

Also: is that true about Liam lookalikes in Camden? sURELY IT'S THE jULIAN cASABLANCAS LOOK NOW (OR WHATEVER THE FUCK HIS NAME IS)

Oh bugger caps, can't be helped.

Not that this is bad thing (not drinking) but if any band really, really pisses me off it's Coldplay. They piss me off more than Kid Rock or Limp Bizkit - at least they aren't false, they just are what they are (music for mullet headed Texans). But Coldplay are so false, and I thought that from the very second I heard "Yellow".

Suede might have hit a pretty rocky period, but for them to be breaking up when even their worst is better than anything by Coldplay just pisses me off to no end.

the liamalike is still in camden, it has kind of merged with the julian. the interesting thing is, you think these guys are going to be self-consciously hyperreal northerners, but they always seem to end up being italian!

i don't get this 'false' thing - why are Coldplay false? i agree with gareth that false is not bad (tho i think real is also good). no, Coldplay's problem is that they're just not really THAT amazing and i find his lyrics pretty dull. he SHOULD write a fun song for once, do the party record with Timbaland - they could do a 'Cry Me A River' beater if they wanted to, or it could be the worst thing ever - either way that's more interesting than the bedwetter stuff they're currently praised rather too highly for.

Anyway, good for them, I guess. The kid will probably be cute on account of having really attractive parents (Margot Tenenbaum is the mom! C'mon!), and have a hunch that Martin would be a pretty good dad.

Unfortunately, he's exactly the kinda guy who will write a sappy song about his kid, so eh, that's not so great. I hope that he resists the urge.

It's been done a thousand times before, and each time was forgivable because you could sense the father's abundant joy. Then came along Scott Stapp and ruined it for everybody.

As for Martin, he's so fucking false. Remember the early interviews: "Waaaah, I was 22 before I lost my virginity and anyone looked at me. My songs are about longing. No one ever loved me" etc etc ad nauseum. Then when he has a bit of prestige and a successful band behind him he's sticking it in Natalie Imbruglia and Gwyn and STILL singing the same old crap, like he's following the Morrissey blue print down to a T, but without any care for being genuine.

Plus, his ego hogs every Coldplay video there is. Who are the other members of the band? Who cares? It's Chris's show all the way. He's doing EXACTLY what NME criticised the likes of Louis Wener for doing, though the sad fact is that Martin isn't even capable of writing something that's as heartfelt as "What do I do Now?" which at least managed to touch me in a way that nothing Coldplay has ever done has.

I hate Coldplay so much that if Chris Martin was to suddenly spontaniously combust I would shed zero tears.

Some bands prefer this method.

I should hope not. People who cry over the deaths of people they've never met and had no prior interest in are weird and creepy and annoying.

the whole point about bands like coldplay is surely, not that it is about his life, but that it is something that 'people' can relate to. or something

or are we demanding that music should mirror the artists life? is music about 'the other' or about the real?

i dont know, fair play to the guy, its definitely working for him

Hmmm...Sting's life must, in actuality, be terrible.

but what bothers you so strenuously about martin being 'false'? and why doesn't it bother you that brett anderson is and always has been straight?

What a sad world it would be if there was only one Dylan album.

There's a lot of truth in this - in fact, I annoyed myself hugely when my eyes spontaneously rebelled and shed tears when I first found out about Kurt Cobain. For shame.

(sorry xpost with stevem)

DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!!! We do not mention this. We all know that he was too drugged up to realise that he had asked for "Kate" meaning, obviously, ME, and got that scrawny treefrog instead.

Aye, fair dos. I meant more in the sense of making a big emotional show of your sadness, as opposed to actually crying about it, which doesn't have any bearing on anything really.

a) a fictional put-on

or

b) an idiot teenager?

It seems hard to imagine that a reasonable person could have such unrealistic demands about art/music unless they were kidding around or just very dumb...