Gordon in the morning: Coldplay go punk

Look, everybody! It wasn't the fridge making that strange dirging noise all night, it was the return of Coldplay. Gordon is delighted by their re-emergence.

It's exciting, isn't it?

Last year Chris Martin [...] hinted the band were ready to show their rebellious side.

Ooh, rebellion, eh? Well, with the Arab Spring and the global austerity blanket, there's plenty of anger and revolution to channel. So what's the comeback single about, then?

The band revealed artwork for their upcoming single Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall yesterday

Every Teardrop Is... A Waterfall, you say? I imagine Cameron is gathering COBRA around him as we speak.

But hang about - we might be being a bit unfair, because while the music is the same, sappy, Young Fotherington-Thomas In Love, there's a new image. Right, Gordon?

[There are] shots of their brave new look.

A brave new look?

Wow, Chris Martin is wearing a denim jacket, like he's really not going to take any shit when he returns a packet of screws to B&Q. And someone's turned up wearing a jerkin.

Gordon, in what way is this "brave"?

[F]rontman Chris is sporting a new slicked back barnet - paying homage to CLASH rocker JOE STRUMMER.

Possibly Joe Strummer. Possibly whoever was batting seventh for Essex in the summer of 1958.

It's definitely going to get the Coldplay fans talking - and probably the Zoolander fashion crowd too.

It will get people talking - "I thought C&A had closed years ago", for example - but it's touching that Smart thinks that people interested in fashion are going to be that surprised by middle-aged men wearing clothes that try to recapture someone else's youth. Badly.

There's spray paint too, you'll have noticed. And only seven years after Starsailor did a Banksy-themed video.

Smart digs out a quote from Chris Martin last year where he warned that he wasn't going to "play it safe" any more. Gordon seems convinced that this is what Martin has done:

Sounds like a real punk ethos. Joe Strummer would have been proud.

Would he? Would he really?

[I]t could make for an interesting summer ahead if Coldplay are about to embrace the punk spirit.

He'll be telling us he's given up eating Fairtrade bananas next.

Their single is called Unicorns Are Pretty But Don't Touch The Sharp Horn, Gordon. They've not embraced the punk spirit, they've just hired a new stylist, and passed it off to gullible journalists as some sort of edgy new direction.

I suppose, to be fair, Malcolm McLaren would probably be grudgingly respectful.