God Put A Smile Upon Your Face by Coldplay

Album: A Rush Of Blood To The Head (2002)

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This song finds Chris Martin and his lover questioning the existence of the afterlife and, more specifically, heaven and hell. While his lover is sure she's headed for some form of eternal damnation, Martin isn't so convinced:

Where do we go? Nobody knows
Don't ever say you're on your way down when
God gave you style and gave you grace
And put a smile upon your face, oh yeah
Chris Martin explained on coldplay.com: "That came out of playing live and wanting to have something with a bit more bounce. We were really getting into things like P.J. Harvey and Muse - things with a bit more energy."
Coldplay bassist Guy Berryman revealed the band initially struggled with this song. It was only after Berryman and Martin sat down and brainstormed ideas that they finally completed it. Berryman explained to Crud Magazine in 2002: "Between the two of us we came up with just this kind of groove, which stays on the same note as opposed to change, it's quite technical but it kind of added a bit of bounce to the song and it made it roll along in a much more fluid way. It was a bit mechanical before and it's just interesting how something small like that can really change the whole vibe of a song. It was just nice because from there on it was one of our favorite tracks and it almost didn't get on the record but it's now one of our favorite tracks."
Directed by Jamie Thraves and starring Dead Man's Shoes actor Paddy Considine, the video for this song is quite disturbing. A businessman notices that his hands start to slowly disappear. He runs through the city streets in a panic and eventually collapses on the sidewalk alone. As the song ends, the man disappears completely and his clothes fall limp on the ground. >>
Suggestion credit:
Adrian - Brookings, SD
American rapper 50 Cent sampled this song on "God Gave Me Style" from his sophomore album The Massacre in 2005. In 2007, English-American producer Mark Ronson teamed up with The Daptone Horns to do an instrumental version for his Motown-inspired covers album, Version. Ronson later performed this brass version as part of a live medley at the Brit Awards in 2008, with additional vocals coming provided by an up-and-coming Adele.
This song appears in Season 2, Episode 14 of the J. J. Abrams-created series Alias: "Double Agent." It plays while Jennifer Garner's character, Sydney Bristow, cooks for her lover, Michael Vaughn. Due to licensing issues, the song was later replaced with "To Have" by san.drine on Netflix.
"God Put a Smile Upon Your Face" is available as a downloadable song on the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, alongside "Yellow" and "Violet Hill."
This song features on Coldplay's sophomore studio album, A Rush of Blood to the Head. It was released as the fourth and final single from the album in select regions after "In My Place," "The Scientist," and "Clocks." In the UK and the US, "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face" was only a promotional single. Consequently, it didn't reach higher than #100 in the UK, and it failed to chart in the US.

Comments: 4

Zero from The Abyss, NjThe guitars in this song are tuned a whole step and a half down, to C sharp standard (or Sabbath standard tuning as I call it).

I've always had my own interpretation of this song, even though I never looked into the official meaning of it - I think the general message is to be happy with what you have, despite all of your disadvantages, you have a lot of good qualities and there is a lot to be thankful for:

"Don't ever say you're on your way down when God gave you style and gave you grace, and put a smile on your face."

Going deeper, though, it seems a lot of people like to complain and even go as far as to try to make themselves seem like martyrs in order to make people feel sorry for them. They compete with other people to see who has it worse, so they can feel superior when it turns out that the other person doesn't have as many obstacles to overcome and the other person should feel bad for them because the first person is so miserable.

"Yeah, when you it out I'm worse than you. Yeah, when you work it out I want it to."

It's like we want to be miserable because our disadvantages give us our self worth, when it should be the opposite, we should be striving to overcome our disadvantages to become happier instead of getting "martyr cred" from our peers because we think we're better people than them because we have more to complain about. We should look at what we DO have in our favor and embrace our talents and fortunes and enjoy them.

"When you work out where to draw the line, you're guess is as good as mine."

That's just my interpretation, hope it helps.
Chris from San Diego, Caso... can anyone explain what is going on in the video? the emptiness/meaninglessness of corporations, greed, consumerism, and business? loss of individuality? divine intervention? is the stranger an embodiment of god?
Ian from Ragama, Sri Lanka (ceylon)I think this song is about confused & lost people. Even though God gave us style, grace & a smile upon our faces, we still don't know where are we going. So where do we go?? Your guess is good as mine...
Adrian from Gettysburg, PaOne of the best songs on the album. It's got a great groove that doesn't stop until the end.

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