Composition
The song is a piano-driven ballad; the song also contains a piano riff. Chris Martin opens the song and is joined by the rest of the band after the first chorus. The song begins with a four-chord piano melody, with Martin singing. The track also includes a string arrangement. Towards the end of the song, an electric guitar can be heard.
The lyrics to the song allude to a man's powerlessness in the face of love. His helplessness is exemplified in the first line of the chorus, as Martin cries "nobody said it was easy". The song implies that he wants to go "back to the start." The first lines of the first verse emphasise an apology: "Come up to meet you/tell you I'm sorry/you don't know how lovely you are." The song's title also alludes to science in question in verse three: "I was just guessing at numbers and figures/pulling the puzzles apart/questions of science, science and progress/do not speak as loud as my heart."
Read more about this topic: The Scientist (song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Every thing in his composition was little; and he had all the weaknesses of a little mind, without any of the virtues, or even the vices, of a great one.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nor diminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)