There are those who say Coldplay has spent decades without creating great anthems. But their concerts bring together millions of fans on every tour. Perhaps it is worth reexamining what we mean by success and failure. PHOTO: Jim Dyson/Getty Images.
A Timely Retirement
Leaving, they say, is for cowards, but in many cases it is a sign of sanity. Or, perhaps, fear of not reaching the excellence of times past.
By Marita Alonso
30 MARCH 2026 / 07:30
Hamlet spoke of to be or not to be. With Coldplay it is more retiring or continuing. “We’re only going to make 12 albums. Having that limit means the quality control is very high right now, and for a song to achieve success is almost impossible. And that’s great. So, where we could be stuck, we’re trying to improve,” said Chris Martin on NBC’s Today show. Although the show’s hosts faulted him for planning to stop making records, many people feel they are already late. That the ideal would have been to retire at the peak of their career and not keep releasing albums. But, is there a rule that tells when you should retire after a success or is it better to continue?
In Chris Martin’s case, we won’t deny that after a few brilliant debut albums, everything else has been of lower quality. It’s not the first band to suffer what we could call the Coldplay Effect: finding themselves at the crossroads of continuing to produce albums, even if they don’t reach the success of the early ones, or retiring and keeping the legend at the top.
Retiring at the Right Time, Is It a Victory?
There are athletes who quit their careers at the peak due to injuries. This week it was announced by Carolina Marín: she was leaving professional badminton to take care of the health of her knees. Others continue competing, even in lower leagues. There’s Griezmann, who will leave Atlético de Madrid to keep playing football in the United States. Or Cristiano Ronaldo, who remains in Saudi Arabia.
“There is a moment in life when stopping the insistence can become the best decision you can make,” says psychologist Walter Riso, one of the proponents of the classic “a timely retirement is a victory.”.
Brave Decision or Act of Cowardice
But society tends to equate retirements with cowardice. ‘Lindsey Vonn, the resilience of a champion who refuses to give up’ was the headline with which a media outlet in 2019 praised the famous skier’s decision to keep skiing. Nine days earlier, she had suffered another fall in which she tore the anterior cruciate ligament of her left knee. “I always say: Never give up! So, to all the guys out there, to my fans who have sent me messages of encouragement to carry on… I have to tell you I won’t give up. I’m just starting a new chapter,” she added.
What happened at the Milano-Cortina games may seem like a cruel twist of fate. And even today, she still does not consider goodbye, as revealed in a recent Vanity Fair interview.
Fear of Saying Goodbye
Annie Duke reflects in Quit!: The Power to Know When to Retire on Time (Alienta, 2024) on our obsession with understanding courage and abandonment as opposing forces. “While courage is a virtue, abandonment is a vice. The advice of great winners is usually summarized in a single message: persevere and you will triumph,” says the author. And she cites Thomas Edison, who said: “Our greatest weakness is giving up. The surest way to triumph is to try again one more time.”
She emphasizes that success does not consist of clinging to things, but in choosing what is right and abandoning everything else. Sometimes courage can become folly. “Abandoning means failing, capitulating, losing. Abandonment denotes a lack of character. Those who abandon are losers,” Duke asserts—a view many share. That way of thinking leads to abandoning only when there is no other option left. And that can be too late.
Heroes Keep Moving Forward…
Literature and cinema teach us that heroes endure. And that they keep walking through the storm, under the bombs or when meteorites the size of the Bernabéu fall. That is why they are heroes, even though sanity makes us think they are reckless. That sometimes it is better to seek shelter and wait for the downpour to pass. That life already makes clear when you should retire and that you should heed the signs.
We undervalue the decisions of those who abandon and thus miss a valuable source of learning. Because giving up on a path is not always a synonym for failure, but can be the smartest strategy to win in the long term. Perhaps not glory, but health, like Carolina Marín. Or simply, to avoid repeating yourself over and over, becoming a poor caricature of what once was.
Continue on Without Reaching Glory
Real life rarely allows us to decide with all the information on the table. Perhaps Vonn wouldn’t have participated in the Games had she known the ordeal that awaited after her dramatic fall. She suffered a compartment syndrome that caused excruciating pain requiring massive doses of fentanyl, morphine and oxycodone. Even today the skier remains in a wheelchair.
But returning to the Coldplay effect: Should they have retired at the height of their career? What can I tell you: if they had, they wouldn’t have given us the glorious scandal of the kiss cam. That said, although in the last two decades they haven’t produced the generation-defining anthems that were Clocks (2002), Fix You (2005) or Viva la Vida (2008), their concerts still dominate and they sell albums like hotcakes.
And perhaps that is the lesson: in life not everything is black or white. Greatness lies in the nuances and in knowing how to enjoy them.
