When I became the towncrier, telling those far and wide ‘I’ve got Coldplay tickets’, the response was either ‘Can I come?’ or something along the lines of ‘Are you going there to have an affair?’
I don’t need to tell you what happened. It might be easier to find those who haven’t seen the Astronomer CEO and his HR head in a cuddly embrace on a warm night in Boston, before they suddenly repelled like identical magnets. The moment became the most memed of the year so far and it all played out on Coldplay’s kiss cam (technically a misnomer, it’s a jumbotron set to Chris Martin’s improvised serenade).
Coldplay was suddenly back in the news and the subject of every dinner conversation, admittedly, for slightly unseemly reasons. Regardless, Martin and co’s first night back at Wembley on their Music of the Spheres tour shows they’re making the most of it.
So are the fans, because I was treated to kiss cam drama of the best kind. As Martin joked ahead of the roaming camera’s work, this is something they were about to do ‘for the first time ever and it definitely didn’t go viral’.
The jumbotron landed on a towering man holding a very-much-homemade sign decrying ‘I want to propose her’ (sic – we can only assume he was so giddy with excitement he didn’t double check the wording). The sign featured an arrow pointing down to his petite girlfriend in front.
After checking neither of them was anyone else’s partner – Martin is completely in on the gag – he sang a ditty advising the fan ‘get down on one knee’. He did, she said yes and the whole of Wembley cheered.
If anything, the kiss cam has made the Coldplay experience – already an astonishing spectacle – even better. It’s gifted Martin a ready-made jibe for every gig, where fans feel they’re getting in on a global story, and is the perfect opportunity for him to do his personal brand of crowd-work.
This has been the same summer that saw Coldplay the butt of an almighty funny gag in the new Freaky Friday sequel, centred around how supposedly dated and lame they are. I’ll admit, I cackled in the cinema.
Every time the Coldplay frontman speaks, it’s with an earnest sincerity that’s largely gone out of fashion. Everything is ‘beautiful’. Fans are urged to send love to war-torn countries through the atmos. Martin swaps through a suite of slogan tees, but not cool girl ones like Addison Rae would be seen in, these profess how ‘everyone is an alien somewhere’ and other similarly mushy sentiments.
Their Coldplay-ness is something Martin references on stage. He seems fine being the butt of the joke. After all, what’s it to them?
This is the highest attended tour in rock history, with over 12million tickets sold. Their wristband-clad experience has reshaped concert-going, with a rotation of fireworks, confetti and flame effects exploding every other minute. Not to mention Martin’s puppyish bounce from one end of the arena to another for two solid hours.
It was easy to surrender to the brilliance of Coldplay’s catalogue. It’s banger after banger: Viva La Vida, The Scientist, Charlie Brown.
The newer material received a more muted response, which the band compensated for with aggressive light effects. Then there was the odd prelude where they all put on alien masks during their Chainsmokers track.
The sincerity might be a bit schmaltzy to non-Martin purists, but Coldplay are putting their do-gooder-ness to use. A slice of concert proceeds go to grassroots artists and their 2021 pledge to lower concert emissions is coming up green. Their Wembley stadium shows are wholly powered by renewable energy.
For all the theatrics, it’s the stripped back moments that I think I’ll remember best. Like when Martin told everyone to put their phones in their pockets and the crowd actually obliged, leaving a sea of LED wristbands set to A Sea Full of Stars. Or, when the quartet gathered in a tight circle, like when they first started making music together in a cramped Camden flat, to play a Parachutes deep cut.
Coldplay might have been around since the turn of the century, but they’re still the ticket everyone wants. Even those who have just been. On the tube home, I was surrounded by fellow concertgoers on their phones, watching and listening back to each belter. After a while, I decided to do the same.
Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour continues.
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