"White Shadows" is a song by English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 alternative rock

Alternative rock

Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...

 band Coldplay

Coldplay

Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...

 and is the third track and sixth overall single on their 2005 album

Album

An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

, X&Y

X&Y

X&Y is the third studio album by English rock band Coldplay, released 6 June 2005 in the United Kingdom via the record label Parlophone. The album, which features influences of electronic music, was produced by the band and British record producer Danton Supple...

. The release of the single in June 2007 resulted in just under half of the songs from the album becoming singles. It was produced by the band and their longtime producer Ken Nelson. The song features synthesizers played by Brian Eno

Brian Eno

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...

 and engineered by Rich Costey

Rich Costey

Rich Costey is an American record producer, engineer, and mixer who has worked with many bands including Muse, Cave In, Thursday, Franz Ferdinand, Glasvegas, The Mars Volta, Doves, Bloc Party, Ontronik , Jimmy Eat World, My Chemical Romance, Supergrass, Audioslave, Rage Against the Machine, Nine...

.

Release

In September 2006, it was announced through a question and answer section at Coldplay.com that "White Shadows" would be the fifth single

Single (music)

In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...

 released from X&Y in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. This would have made it the sixth song overall to be released from the album, following the limited releases of "The Hardest Part

The Hardest Part (Coldplay song)

"The Hardest Part" is a song by English alternative rock band Coldplay. It was written by all four members of the band for their third album, X&Y. A piano-based ballad song, it begins with a two-note piano melody, followed with electric guitar lines, that accompanies a slow tempo drumming. It was...

" and "What If". Weeks later it was reported on the band's official message board that "White Shadows" would not be the next single. This came not long after they decided not to release a DVD of a June 2006 performance in Toronto. No reasons were ever given.

Although "White Shadows" was not released as a worldwide single, the song was released as a radio-only single in Mexico in June 2007 to promote the band's Latin America Tour.

Reception

Despite the song's low profile release in mid-2007, critics were positive, even before the track was officially released as a single. In the Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly

Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

review of the album, music contributor David Browne

David Browne

David Browne is an American journalist and author. He was the resident music critic at Entertainment Weekly between 1990 and 2006. He was an editor at Music & Sound Output magazine and a music critic at the New York Daily News before EW...

 wrote that the line "part of a system I am, I am" from the chorus is a reference to the band's "celestial" sound. Michael Hubbard of MusicOMH assumed that the "system" referred to in this line was "Capitalism ... with fair trade

Fair trade

Fair trade is an organized social movement and market-based approach that aims to help producers in developing countries make better trading conditions and promote sustainability. The movement advocates the payment of a higher price to producers as well as higher social and environmental standards...

 fluffiness attached", noting that Chris Martin does not write songs for a "specialist audience". Hubbard also noted that "White Shadows" segues into the next song on the X&Y album, "Fix You

Fix You

"Fix You" is a song by English alternative rock band Coldplay. It was written by all four members of the band for their third album, X&Y. The track is built around an organ, that is accompanied by slow tempo drums, and a vocals. It was released on 5 September 2005 as the second single from X&Y and...

". Adrien Begrand from PopMatters

PopMatters

PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...

 described "White Shadows" as "terrific". Begrand also wrote that White Shadows' and the aptly titled 'Low' both draw slightly from Berlin-era David Bowie

David Bowie

David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

".

Charts

Chart (2007)	Peak Position
Mexican Top 100	87