The year was 2000 and this writer was looking for something a little different when deciding to check out what was happening on the other side of the pond. Within seconds, I was streaming British DJ Steve Lamacq's weekly BBC radio show "Lamacq Live" when I heard "Yellow" by a new band called Coldplay.
There are many songs I've discovered in similar fashion over the years, but very few ever seem to be able to make a dent in the U.S. market so I was quite surprised when I began hearing the song on U.S. radio stations several weeks later.
The defining moment of the band's success came when a conversation I was listening to a story being told by TV legend Garry Marshall at a local watering hole he and I both frequented when I was interrupted by a San Fernando Valley soccer mom playing the song ten times in a row on the jukebox. At first, it wasn't that I was hearing the song for the fourth or fifth time in a row that was grating, but the enthusiasm with which the woman clapped and hooted every time the song began playing, as if surprised to be hearing her favorite song.
It was obvious she was trying to show her friends how hip and "with it" she was, but ultimately the bartender eventually had to ask her how many more times the song was going to play before making the executive decision to unplug the juke and refund the woman a portion of her money.
Now, there's absolutely nothing wrong with soccer moms, per se, but whatever coolness factor Coldplay and their song "Yellow" had ever had were forever shattered on that fateful night.
Two years later, the band released their second album A Rush Of Blood To The Head and connected with a worldwide audience of soccer moms \n' dads when, for quite a lengthy period of time, you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing the piano intro to "Clocks". While the album bared a strong resemblance to U2's later work, it was a bit disheartening to see the band no longer resembling the one I had initially enjoyed so much.
With each new Coldplay album, I had been under the impression that the band was simply living out their dream of becoming U2, right down to working with Brian Eno on 2008's Viva La Vida, but the band would ultimately prove my prognosis a hasty one.
And with the release of their latest single, "Adventure Of A Lifetime", it is now painfully obvious to these ears that the band that Coldplay had secretly aspired to be all these years wasn't Bono & the boys, but, rather, Junior Senior, whose "Move Your Feet" had been an international hit in 2002.
Since then, the production-style of the Danish duo's lone chart hit has come very much in vogue as bands ranging from Foster the People to Beck to Tame Impala have gone to great lengths to reproduce it on recent efforts.
The only downside is that rarely are the results as infectiously joyous as Junior Senior's "Move Your Feet".