Lost!

Album: Viva la Vida (2008)
Charted: 54 40
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Songfacts®:

  • This song, featuring massive-sounding church organ strains over a Chris Martin vocal, was recorded according to lead guitarist Jonny Buckland: "in a church up the road that's now a studio. In a huge room with a piano and organ going at the same time." (Source Q magazine July 2008)
  • Drummer Will Champion told Q magazine February 2008 that this was "drastically reinvented by ditching its "big Hip-Hop beat."
  • This was one of the first songs Coldplay worked on for the record. The band were originally inspired by the song "Sing" by Blur, which they were listening to in their dressing room before performing in a gig in Detroit. They tried to write a song like it and it ended up evolving in various ways with lots of different versions before the final recorded rendering. Chris Martin explained to MTV News: "That's often how we write, is we listen to something and we think it's incredible, and we feel stupid for not having anything as good as that, so we go and try to play it. And then, of course, because we don't know how to do that, we often come up with something new."
  • Chris Martin (from The Sun newspaper May 13, 2008): "The line in this song 'Just because I'm losing doesn't mean I'm lost' is what the whole record came out of because we were feeling down at the end of the last tour. That line arrived and it was, 'OK, that's how we kinda feel. We know we can improve."
  • The song's single version also featured alternative versions "Lost?" and "Lost@." Later in 2008, a new version of this tune titled "Lost+", with an added cameo from rapper Jay-Z, was included on Coldplay's EP Prospekt's March. Chris Martin quipped to Q magazine January 2009: "Say what you like about us, we might not be rock 'n' roll but we do more with punctuation than any other band."
  • This is not the first time that Martin and Jay-Z have worked together. The Coldplay frontman sung the hook on "Beach Chair," a track on the rapper's 2006 Kingdom Come album.
  • Coldplay and Jay-Z performed this at the Grammy Awards in 2009. Coldplay then performed "Viva La Vida," which won for Best Song later in the show.
  • The single was Coldplay's first ever release to miss the UK Top 40.

Comments: 11

  • Nana from Nairobi, KenyaI feel this song speaks to me on a higher level. It is full encouragement. Yes I am losing, but I am not lost. I can still get back!!
  • Mckenna from Logan, Uti love this song becuase it feels like its saying, we all have our ups and downs and we all get lost with ourselves at different times.
  • Justin from Roseville, CaI remember the first time I hear this song I kept looking at the young lad on the album cover, the Delacroix painting. He's got a pistol in each hand and his pose expresses his action of leading a charge. He looks triumphant, with huge momentum. I guess it's like the song. In the middle of battle, he sees the ability to strive forward.
  • Mitchell from Adelaide, Australia I guess it has a U2ish 'All I Want Is You' feel, I can't really think about it right now without actually listening to U2 songs and this at the same time.
  • Mark from Worcester, MiThis song sounds a real lot like U2 to me. I mean that in a good way. If you had to guess who it was when you first heard it, do you not hear U2?
  • Nick from Arlington Heights, IlThe organ riff in this song is the exact same one that begins "Swing, Swing" by All American Rejects.
  • Nick from Arlington Heights, IlThe organ riff in this song is the exact same one that begins "Swing, Swing" by All American Rejects.
  • Jessica from Bloomfield , NjI hope it's the next single after "Viva La Vida". It has officially become my personal anthem. There is just something about this song that speaks to me on a personal level.
  • Bernard from Auckland, New ZealandAwesome song, i think they use a little bit to much pipe organ in the background, but i never get tired of hearing the song.
  • Susan from Westchestertonfieldville, Va" you might be a big fish in a little pond, doesn't mean you've won"
  • Susan from Westchestertonfieldville, VaI like it, I bet it is the next single after "Viva la Vida"
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