A Rush of Blood to the Head has been critically acclaimed, and the band received three Grammy Awards for the album at the 45th Grammy Awards; Best Alternative Album, which was the band's second win in a row, Best Rock Performance for "In My Place", and Record of the Year for "Clocks" at the 46th ceremony.

"[1] The band wrote more than twenty songs in the months following for the album and some of those, including "In My Place" and "Animals", were performed live during the tours promoting Parachutes.

[15] During initial recording sessions in Liverpool, Martin and guitarist Jonny Buckland worked alone, and only on weekends.

[13] With A Rush of Blood to the Head nearly completed, Martin went into the studio late one night and wrote a piano riff that he has stated "just came out".

Such ambitions put the band under strain: "sometimes practice sessions ended abruptly with one or more members of Coldplay threatening to quit".

[18] After headlining the 2002 Glastonbury Festival, Coldplay returned to the studio and worked on some tracks from the "Songs for #3" CD they had produced earlier.

"[16][17] Production of the album began quickly with the writing of the track "Politik", which was a song seen as a reflection of the world at the time, giving the band a renewed perspective on their lives and society.

These tracks are based on reality, but according to Martin, they were written with a fictional twist: "Songs are like fairy tales: they have a beginning and an end and you can make it all work perfectly.

[19] Chris Martin has also stated that the album's title track is an homage to American singer-songwriter Johnny Cash, whom he considered one of "the greatest ... men with just guitars".

Sundsbø had been hired by fashion magazine Dazed & Confused in the late 1990s to produce a shot with a "technological feel, something all white", according to himself.

[23] The model for the shots, named Mim, wore all-white cosmetic makeup, along with a coloured twill cape, to aesthetically produce optimal and desired results.

The scanner could not properly identify some of the colors on the cape, so they were replaced with digital spikes, and the head in the image was chopped as the machine was unable to scan more than about thirty centimeters in height at a time.

[23] The album booklet contains only two photos; One with Coldplay in a location that was rumoured to be a forest, and one with the band in a recording studio.

The album was completed and originally ready to hand over to record representatives and released in June 2002, however, after recording a demo of "Clocks" intended for the third album, the band delayed release by two months to allow them to work it into a finished track and include it on A Rush of Blood to the Head.

Wilson, who compliments Martin for his "sharpened" falsetto and refined "haunting delivery" and Buckland for his "riveting guitar work", notes that "regardless of the band still being in their mid-twenties, they've made an amazing record".

[40] Emma Pearse of the American newspaper The Village Voice has the same sentiments, stating that it is "a little edgier, trancier, and more conversational" compared to Parachutes.

[41] Conversely, Robert Christgau gave the album a one-star honorable mention () and quipped "Let Green Eyes dump him for real and we'll see how long he hums in the void".

A Rush of Blood to the Head has been placed at number seven on the list of United Kingdom's 20 biggest-selling albums of the 21st century, published by the British trade paper Music Week.

[101][102][103] In the United States, A Rush of Blood was Coldplay's first venture into the top 5 with 141,000 copies sold initially, stronger than its predecessor, Parachutes, which debuted at number 189 in December 2000.

[107] All tracks written and co-produced by Coldplay (Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion and Chris Martin).