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Mylo Xyloto

2011 studio album by Coldplay

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ679632 ↗
Source-derived summary

Mylo Xyloto ( MY-loh ZY-lə-toh) is the fifth studio album by British rock band Coldplay. It was released by Parlophone on 19 October 2011 in Japan and 24 October 2011 in the rest of the world. The band worked closely with producer Brian Eno following their successful collaboration on their previous album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (2008).

Mylo Xyloto is the band's first concept album, and it also is a thematic rock opera. The album tells the story of a war against sound and colour on the planet Silencia, which has been overtaken by a totalitarian government led by Major Minus, who controls the population through media and propaganda. His aim is to take sound and colour off the streets in hope to draw away "feeders", creatures that use such energy to hunt its prey. The album follows Mylo Xyloto, a "silencer", a soldier in an army tasked to hunt and track down "sparkers", people who harness light and energy and use it to create sparks, comparable to graffiti in real life. He encounters Fly, the sparker most wanted by Major Minus. Through Fly, Mylo discovers his sparker abilities and his affiliation with the Car Kids, a major sparker faction founded by Mylo's parents, Aiko and Lela. Drummer Will Champion has noted that the album is a story of the characters "falling in love and trying to escape together", with a general theme of "love conquering all".

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Mylo Xyloto” as 2011 studio album by Coldplay. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mylo, Xyloto and studio.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2011, 2008—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2011-10-24. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Mylo, Xyloto and studio providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Mylo Xyloto”, the useful work is to connect “2011 studio album by Coldplay” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q679632. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011 and 2008.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mylo Xyloto”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mylo Xyloto primary sources, Mylo Xyloto archive and Mylo research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mylo Xyloto”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Mylo Xyloto” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.