By 2002 Coldplay were the band that made Parachutes, gentle, watery, easy to file next to everyone else doing the same thing. A Rush of Blood to the Head is the record where they decided that was not enough. It is harder, stranger, and more sure of itself. The guitars push where they used to drift. The piano arrives like it has somewhere to be. You can hear a band testing how big a feeling they can carry without dropping it.

The songs here are about endings, mostly: relationships, certainties, the comfort of staying still. Clocks made the band a stadium fixture almost by accident. The Scientist became the one people reach for in the dark. And the title track closes things on a nervier note, a warning about acting on impulse from a band that had just made its boldest move.

This is the album where Coldplay stopped apologising for wanting to be enormous. Whether that thrills you or worries you, it is the turn that decided everything after it.