Quickly – try to think of something more boring than a legal dispute between Joe Satriani and Coldplay.

You can’t, can you? That’s because legal disputes between Joe Satriani and Coldplay are the most boring things ever created. If you look up ‘boring’ in the dictionary, you won’t see a picture of a legal dispute between Joe Satriani and Coldplay, because when the author thought about drawing an illustration of a legal dispute between Joe Satriani and Coldplay he became so overwhelmed with boredom that he shot himself.

Anyway, Coldplay have denied stealing a Joe Satriani song. That was our point.

If you own Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends by Coldplay and the 2004 Joe Satriani album Is There Love In Space?, then you… no, actually, wait a minute. What sort of sick bastard owns both Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends by Coldplay and Is There Love In Space? by Joe Satriani? Do you own both of those albums? Do you? Do you? You do? God, you’re disgusting. What went so wrong in your childhood that made you think that owning an album by Coldplay and Joe Satriani was an acceptable thing to do? Get out. Get out now before we vomit. Oh too late, we’ve already vomited. Now we’re covered in vomit and it’s all your fault. Happy now? Are you happy now?

Anyway, to return to our original point, if you own the Coldplay album and the Joe Satriani album, then you might have noticed a disturbing similarity between Coldplay’s song Viva La Vida and Joe Satriani’s song If I Could Fly. Joe Satriani certainly did, which is why he sued Coldplay for plagiarism at the arse-end of last year.

Now, admittedly Joe Satriani might be the only one who noticed this due to the fact that If I Could Fly sounds like the sort of music you’d be able to buy at a sodding garden centre, but he noticed nevertheless. Not that Coldplay are having any of it – they’ve denied the whole thing in court. The Guardian reports:

According to documents submitted this week by Coldplay’s legal team, any similarities between the artists’ work is not enough to warrant damages. Furthermore, Coldplay’s lawyers allege that Satriani’s song “lacks originality” and should not receive copyright protection… Coldplay have so far resisted paying Satriani. “If there are any similarities between our two pieces of music,” they said in an earlier statement, “they are entirely coincidental and just as surprising to us as to him.”

You can see why Coldplay are so determined not to acknowledge any similarity between their song and Joe Satriani’s – Chris Martin already has enough of a credibility problem what with his boring songs and the way he looks like a drunk horse in a fire-damaged afro. Admitting that he habitually listens to Joe Satriani – who scientists recently discovered was the opposite of music – would finish him off for good.

In the end, though… no, we can’t do it. We tried, but we really can’t care about any of this. Someone wake us up when it’s over.

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It may not have happened yet, but we can’t see it being edgy, cool or vaguely risky. The show goes out at 8pm, leaving today’s young pop stars with an entire hour to swear before the watershed kicks in.

Just over a week ago, we watched the Grammys which quite frankly overshadowed the entire Brits ceremony. Not only did the Grammys have a million categories where nearly everyone can win, but we don’t expect there to be any pre-show scraps like the alleged one between Rihanna and Chris Brown. Unless someone attacks Chris Martin with a pack of streaky bacon.

Hosted by Kylie and the two blokes from Gavin And Stacy, we’ll no doubt see references to their own show multiple times during the Brits. Well, that and Kylie putting on her best fake smile when she doesn’t get all the references towards Cumberland sausage.

Its shame really that M.I.A couldn’t keep her newborn child inside her belly for an extra week. How selfish of how to boost the Grammy ratings with a potential live birth. Poor Fearne Cotton would have been perfect to follow the event live on a special ITV2 show. Imagine her mopping up M.I.A’s broken waters and getting the first interview with the child.

Coldplay, Duffy, Elbow, Radiohead and The Ting Tings have all been nominated for best British album. This strikes us as nothing short of an amazing feat for Radiohead to be nominated. Not because it’s a rubbish record, but their In Rainbows album was released in 2007. It became downloadable in October and physically went on sale in December. Perhaps the organisers didn’t want to nominate Estelle in case she did a wonky dance as an acceptance speech. Or maybe everything else released last year was utter gash.

We’d go through each and every nomination, but to be honest it’ll be a waste of your time. Despite winning the Mercury prize, Elbow will win bugger all, Coldplay will sweep the board and make cheesy acceptance speeches and Take That will have to do with their music being used in supermarket adverts.

But what about the entertainment on the night? Who is going to perform at the ceremony and no doubt see their record sales/downloads rise dramatically the next day. Make sure your socks don’t blow off, because the following people are going to be singing and messing up dance routines. Coldplay, Duffy, Estelle, The Ting Tings, Pet Shop Boys, Girls Aloud, Kings Of Leon, Take That and bloody U2.

Yes, U2 are going to be providing us with a performance with their latest single in an attempt to get more people to like it and get over its strange title. We don’t know if Bono plans to spice it up with some visual imagery of dying children, topped off with a speech about how economically fucked we are.

Each year, the ceremony honours a band/artist who in the eyes of the BPI has contributed outstandingly to music. This year, synth-based techno duo The Pet Shop Boys get the dubious honour. With fifty million sales behind them, we can’t really argue with how successful they are. At least they kept Simply Red out for another year.

Will someone turn up drunk at the ceremony? How many swearwords will be uttered? Who’ll balls up their acceptance speech and fall off the stage? No-one knows! Tune in to ITV from 8pm tonight to see the supposed best of British music being celebrated.

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Well, not if you’re Joe Satriani. Joe’s claiming that Coldplay ripped off chunks his song If I Could Fly in Viva La Vida, and he’s suing the band for everything they’ve got – so essentially a U2 songbook, some tatty faux-Napoleonic jackets and a scrawny wife who always looks miserable.

Why wasn’t the comparison between the songs pointed out sooner? Because everyone knows that if you own a Coldplay album and a Joe Satriani album, you must be drowned like a witch, that’s why.

The problem with music is that there are only so many notes available to an artist, and only so many combination of notes they can use before songs start sounding familiar. That’s why sometimes you get a situation where Avril Lavigne writes a song that sounds a bit like Hey Mickey, a bit like The Rolling Stones, a bit like Peaches and a bit like some band we’ve never heard of and yet somehow worse than all of them.

It’s not plagiarism, it’s just an unfortunate coincidence. But what’s really unfortunate is when a band makes a song that sounds like another artist’s song and both performers are crap and the note progression in both songs is so woeful that it makes us want to saw through into our belly, feed our arm up through the hole and punch the bad noise out of our brain with our fists from the inside.

Which, hey, seems to be what’s happening with Joe Satriani and Coldplay.

In 2004, Joe Satriani – the guitar bore who makes music for people who don’t like music – released an album with the punchworthy title Is There Love in Space? The album contained a song called If I Could Fly, which nobody paid any attention to at first because it was boring and almost certainly the sort of thing that Noel Edmonds would enjoy using as his on-hold music.

Flash forward four years, though, and Coldplay have released song called Viva La Vida on an album of the same name which was boring and almost certainly the sort of thing that Noel Edmonds would enjoy using as his… hey, wait a minute!

Long story short, Joe Satriani’s now suing Coldplay for ripping him off. BBC reports:

In court papers filed in Los Angeles on Thursday, he said the song used “substantial original portions” of his 2004 instrumental If I Could Fly. Satriani, 52, wants a jury trial and is seeking damages and “any and all profits” for the alleged plagiarism.

But how similar are If I Could Fly and Viva La Vida? Luckily YouTube is all over this. Look…

OK, they are kind of similar. But it won’t be up to us to decide who’ll win this lawsuit. However, if Joe Satriani does win, it’ll be a terrible blow to Coldplay – not just a financial blow but, because one of Coldplay will actually have to admit to owning a Joe Satriani album, a blow to any notion that the band understands what good music sounds like.

But regardless of who wins the lawsuit, there can only be one loser here. And that’s us – the knowledge that two artists have chosen to use a melody so obviously stupid has pretty much obliterated what little remaining faith in humanity we had. If you need us we’ll be weeping in the corner.

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Some of the nominations for next year’s Grammys have been announced, and British names like Robert Plant, Adele, Duffy, MIA and Radiohead are all over them. Now we’re not saying that this is because 2008 was a bad year for music, but Coldplay did get seven nominations, so we suppose in retrospect we are a bit.

And this is just the start – next year the rest of the Grammy nominations are announced, including Best Native American Music Album. Come on Coldplay! Make it eight!

You don’t need to be told that winning a Grammy is a sure sign that you’ve made it in the music industry, a sign up there alongside being chased through Japan by screaming schoolgirls and being forced to orally pleasure a sweaty middle-aged record executive for a contract.

So the Grammy nominations are a big deal. And when we say big, we mean big – so big that the actual task of even reading out all the nominees for all 110 categories has to be split up over two calender years because listening to them all in one go would probably inspire some kind of Jonestown-style mass suicide.

That’s why, yesterday, the Grammy nominations were announced, but only for the handful of categories that anyone actually cares about. And, although Lil’ Wayne led the pack with eight nominations and Jay-Z, Kanye West and Ne-Yo all managed to get six nods each, the list was surprisingly Brit-heavy.

Coldplay managed to score seven Grammy nominations, Radiohead got five, while Robert Plant was recognised for his album with Alison Krauss and comparatively new girls like Duffy, Leona Lewis, Adele and MIA all got nods too. But why so many British artists? Reuters thinks it knows why:

“They’re doing great work,” said producer Jimmy Jam, a top Grammy official. He suggested this year’s crop of British newcomers benefited from a “trickle down” from the likes of trouble-prone London neo-soul singer Amy Winehouse, who won the record, song and best new artist Grammys this year.

He’s right. After her slightly unbelievable Grammy wins last year, Amy Winehouse is still big news – but because she’s too busy trying to complete her transformation into Feeble Mumm-Ra at the moment, she’s not eligible for any awards.

In fact, it’s not hard to see that the British acts that were nominated for Grammys yesterday were only chosen because together they make a kind of composite Amy Winehouse – Leona Lewis has the broad appeal of Amy, Adele has the voice, Duffy has the vintage sound, MIA shares Amy’s love of multiculturalism, Radiohead have Amy Winehouse’s funny-looking eyes and Robert Plant has her genuinely awful hair. And what do Coldplay share with Amy Winehouse? The fact that if we hear either of their names spoken again today we’re going to hurl ourselves out of the arseing window.

But let’s not get too excited, Britain – these are just the Grammy nominations. Nobody’s guaranteed to win anything. Fingers crossed that Coldplay pick up a couple of trophies at least, though – because if their next album is going to be the ‘boo hoo Gwyneth Paltrow left me‘ album that everyone’s expecting, they probably shouldn’t worry about saving any more shelf-space.

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Times have changed. Granted, you may be obese through to an addiction of Ginsters pasties, but that doesn’t matter. Back in the old days you may have had no musical ability, but all that has changed due to the creation of Guitar Hero. You can almost be as good as Slash as you press a few coloured buttons in time to the ones on the screen. Now sodden Coldplay have only donated a couple of songs. Preaching about the environment is optional.

Guitar Hero is a stroke of genius. It’s the only time you’d get to be a rockstar. Minus the drugs, drink, groupies, sex orgies, wild hotel antics and er… the live experience of performing to 30,000 screaming fans who want your babies.

Has the game inspired a new generation of musicians? We bloody hope not, because we are suffering enough with wet bands like The Kooks, The Feeling, Scouting For Girls and The Hoosiers. At least The Red Hot Chilli Peppers had the decency to bugger off for a year.

The most rock n roll thing you can actually do with the game is smash the controller up. Granted it cost around £40/50 but would you do the same to a £1000 guitar? If you had any sense, you probably wouldn’t. But then again we don’t know you. With clone versions of the game spawning other instruments, you can have your own virtual band! We recommend having real arguments to make it a bit more true to life. Isolating the drummer or firing the singer just before a virtual gig will get the fireworks going.

So with high profile bands featuring The Ramones and Deep Purple you’d think any expansion pack would carry on this vibe. Sadly not, the publishers have gone for a weedier down tempo vibe with Coldplay. They must have a new album to promote or something. If song was bad enough to make you cry, how will you cope knowing there are three tracks used altogether?

“Included in the pack will be new single ‘Violent Hill’, classic track ‘Yellow’ and the high-octane ‘God Put a Smile Upon Your Face.”

Hecklerspray won’t stand for this. So much so that we are zipping up our trousers and refusing to rock out with our cocks out.

Read More:

Coldplay To Release ‘Guitar Hero’ Tracks – Digital Spy

And, from what we’ve heard, the new Coldplay album is a lot like the old Coldplay album – it’s all inoffensively big-sounding and the lyrics don’t make much sense and it’ll work decently enough as a soundtrack to those bi-monthly trips to Habitat with the kids. But one thing it isn’t is sexy.

Never fear, though, because Coldplay have already found a solution – they’ve apparently recorded a duet with Kylie. It would have been on their new album, too, except that Chris Martin says it’s “just too sexy”. Hecklerspray accepts no liability for the almost-guaranteed permanent loss of libido caused by reading that last sentence.

It’s great that Coldplay are back, isn’t it? Really, we’re not joking – if there’s one thing we enjoy it’s the sight of a band cartwheeling around on an iTunes advert in silhouette, so we don’t have to look at their shameful apologetic faces during it.

And make no mistake, Coldplay are back. Their new album Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends comes out on June 12; the band’s next step in their interminable ‘write album/ claim album is best album ever/ release album/ disown album/ write album’ recording cycle. The first single from the album was downloaded by two million mostly underwhelmed people, so everything’s in place for it to be tediously ubiquitous once it comes out.

And Coldplay aren’t taking any chances with this one, either – as well as free downloads and iTunes adverts and vinyl singles glued to magazines, the band wants to make sure that Viva La Vida doesn’t cause any adverse reactions – like making people involuntarily vomit and cry and deliberately shun all forms of human intimacy for the rest of their lives. And that’s why a duet that Coldplay recorded with Kylie won’t be appearing on the album.

Yes, Coldplay recorded a duet with Kylie. Apparently, it’s ‘too sexy’. We’re scared too. The Mirror reports:

Chris Martin has revealed Coldplay’s collaboration with Kylie will be released next year because it was too sexy to include on their new album. When he was asked why it didnt make it on to latest record Viva La Vida, he said: “Well, its just too sexy. At this point, we cannot be that sexy, also we haven’t quite finished it. It’s a song called Lunar and Kylie is particularly brilliant on it.”

Mmm, sexy. A scrawny-looking vegetarian who names his children after fruit and mad-eyed biblical figures singing a saucy song with a 40-year-old midget whose face increasingly resembles the Scream mask with a prolapsed eyebrow.

Thank God Coldplay didn’t release it – just think of all the spontaneous municipal orgies that’d happen every time it got played on the radio. Really, their concern for public hygiene is second to none.

Don’t get too comfortable, though, because Chris Martin is adamant the Kylie collaboration will be released on a record planned for the future. That record – Coldplay Sings The Songs That’ll Make You Sit In The Corner Of A Room In The Dark Trying To Claw The Repulsion From Your Skin With Your Fingernails – is due out next year, by the way.

To mark their return, Coldplay recently decided to release their new single Violet Hill as a free download. And apparently Violet Hill has now been downloaded by two million people eager to hear Coldplay’s Spanish-influenced, Brian Eno-helmed new direction.

Sadly there aren’t any figures for how many people only listened to Violet Hill once, rolled their eyes because it’s exactly the same as every other Coldplay song ever written and instantly deleted it from their iTunes library. We’re guessing it’s just a shade off two million.

The fastest way to get people excited by anything is to offer them something for free. People love free stuff. We’ve literally seen people arguing over a bag of horseshit in the past because it was free. And if they love horseshit they’ll go crazy for new music by Coldplay.

Now don’t get the wrong idea. We’re not comparing Coldplay to horseshit. It’s an unfair comparison to make because, well, everyone loves horseshit, don’t they? Anyway, we’re straying dangerously away from the point here, and that’s that last week Coldplay released their new single as a free download. And also that horseshit is better than Coldplay.

Violet Hill was the first taster from Coldplay’s new album Viva La Vida, and last Tuesday the band let the world download it for free. It was a smart move – a quick and easy way to remind people of their return, help diffuse the pressure of following up an album that was number one around the world and allow them to exorbitantly overcharge fans for concert tickets in future because it gave them that one song for free once, remember?

And, according to Coldplay, Violet Hill has been downloaded two million times since last Tuesday, which is apparently enough to outsell the entire top 40 four times over. Just imagine how many people would have downloaded it if it was actually good. The Telegraph reports:

In the first 12 hours, it was downloaded by 300,000 people, a figure which doubled overnight as other countries logged on to coldplay.com… Gennaro Castaldo, of HMV, said: “Coldplay will not have made a huge loss by giving away their first single because they are very much a group that connects with their fans via their album. The industry will be looking very carefully at how the album sells following their decision to allow their fans to downlaod the first single for free.”

Plus, don’t forget that giving away your first single for free means that you won’t look a clown when you’re inevitably beaten to number one by The Crazy Frog again.

Anyway, two million downloads in a week is a huge amount, but don’t be fooled by this whole ‘enough to outsell the top 40′ nonsense, because that’d only really work if the download was limited to people who live in the UK. The two million figure is worldwide, and that’s still good – but it means Violet Hill is not quite as popular as My Humps. And people paid for that. And it was My Humps.

Also, because it was free, you can’t expect everyone who downloaded Violet Hill to go and buy the new Coldplay album. In fact, if you start with two million and minus the number of people who just downloaded Violet Hill because it was free, then minus the number of critics who downloaded it out of professional obligation, then minus the people who downloaded it because they were curious to see if Coldplay had actually managed to make a good record and instantly deleted it because they obviously hadn’t, and what are you left with?

Chris Martin’s Mum. Good work, Mrs Martin! Keep making us proud!

Read more:

2m people download new Coldplay single – Telegraph

Others have since copied Radiohead and given their music away for free. And today another major band is set to do the same. Coldplay may not be everyone’s band of choice, but anything free is usually welcomed by all.

At 12.15pm GMT, you can download new single Violet Hill for nothing! Though we recommend visiting at 1pm as the website will probably crash due to heavy web traffic passing through early on. And because you don’t like Coldplay enough to download it immediately. Nobody does.

Not quite as spectacular as Radiohead, but still shows that big bands are shunning the traditional system of distributing music. However, if you do want to own a physical copy of the new Coldplay single, you can sell your soul to the NME. It plans to give away a 7” copy of the single along with a non-album track.

To download the single, visit www.coldplay.com