Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
2008 studio album by Coldplay
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, often referred to as simply Viva la Vida, is the fourth studio album by the British rock band Coldplay, released on 12 June 2008 by Parlophone in the United Kingdom. "Viva la vida" is a Spanish phrase, translated to English as "long live life" or simply "live life". Lyrically, the album contains references to love, life, death and war.
Recording sessions for the album took place from November 2006 to April 2008 and featured production by Jon Hopkins, Rik Simpson, Markus Dravs, and Brian Eno. The album was Coldplay's first not to feature any production input from Ken Nelson, who produced their first two albums and co-produced some tracks on their third. The band forced themselves to explore new styles, as Eno required every song on the album to sound different. Development of the album delayed the release date several times. The album cover of Viva la Vida is the 1830 painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix with the album title over it.
Viva la Vida was both a critical and commercial success. Five songs were released to promote the album: "Violet Hill" and "Viva la Vida" in May 2008, "Lovers in Japan" and "Lost!" in November 2008, and "Strawberry Swing" in September 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” 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.