Coldplay: Viva La Vida, or Death and All His Friends (Parlophone)

COLDPLAY'S X&Y, they've since explained, was the final part of a trilogy — a claim some might consider a cunning defence against accusations that they're a one-trick pony mining a stadium-filling formula to death. Whichever way one takes it, it leaves the globe-girdling anthem-mongers with quite a mountain to climb on Viva La Vida.