Coldplay goes upbeat with newest release
Bright and shiny production is an attempt ‘to link the personal with the universal,’ says frontman Chris Martin
“We felt like rock music has been done,” says Chris Martin, apparently dropping the lid on 60 years of swaggering guitar bands.
Contemplating the zesty pop tones of Coldplay’s new album, A Head Full of Dreams, Martin suggests “the future of music is in new sounds and new ways of treating vocals. We wanted to add those colours to our palette.”
His bandmate Guy Berryman agrees: “There’s an awful lot of rock music already out there. I’m not sure there is anything left to add.”
Yet as frontman for Coldplay, the biggest-selling band this century, Martin is still arguably the definitive rock star of the last decade. So it is interesting how uncomfortable he is with established notions of stardom.
The 38-year-old doesn’t drink or take drugs, dresses scruffily in sweatpants and a hoodie, and likes to walk everywhere without retinues of bodyguards and hangers-on.
Forming the band in 1996, at the end of Britpop and arguably the beginning of the end for rock music, he thinks “an advantage for our generation is that we see how things turned out for other musicians. The old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll lifestyle thing is great, but does it really make for great music? Does it make people happy? I don’t feel we’re embarrassed about being successful, but we don’t need the perm and the gold Rolex.”
Walking around London, Martin doesn’t always manage to maintain his anonymity. Recently, he found himself being assailed by irate builders yelling: “I’m sick of seeing you in my newspaper every f---ing day.”
With their new album climbing the charts, Coldplay is in the midst of a blitzkrieg of radio and TV appearances and have announced a stadium world tour for 2016. So it was never going to be a quiet week. But the element that adds prurient intensity to the attention is Martin’s 2014 divorce from Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow, after 10 years of marriage and two children, and subsequent romantic links with Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence. He is currently dating British actress Annabelle Wallis.
“I don’t mind what anyone thinks about the soap opera element of my life,” Martin insists with a shrug and a grin. “Every human being, whether they are a pop star, a prince or a pauper, has challenges. So the interesting questions are about how do you respond to them. Do you let them control your day?”
Coldplay’s subdued and introverted 2014 album, Ghost Stories, was widely deemed to be Martin’s divorce record, and the upbeat A Head Full of Dreams has already been pronounced to be the sound of him bouncing back — his dating album if you will.
“Songwriting to me is about making sense of the day,” says Martin. “So of course my personal experiences are in there, but I wouldn’t like to reduce it to that. I am really trying to process the outside world. So if I’m looking at a story about Israel or Palestine or reading The Grapes of Wrath, it all comes through.”
He describes the album as an attempt “to link the personal with the universal.” It concludes with Up and Up, an inspirational song about changing things in life that are not working for you that “just grew and grew and now it sounds like this big world peace anthem.
“But it came from a very personal place.”
It is a bright and shiny album full of the brash hooks and dynamic beats of modern pop. Coldplay made the surprising choice to work with Norwegian production duo Stargate, renowned as hitmakers for Rihanna and Beyoncé (the latter guests on the album, along with Noel Gallagher).
“Rock and pop is like chalk and cheese,” notes drummer Will Champion. “We instinctively, as a band, gravitate toward density. Our records are full of layers, strings, synths, twinkly bits, the whole lush world of real, comforting, big sounds that you can use to help communicate emotion. There is so much space and clarity on modern pop records. Stargate are brilliant at finding what’s important in a piece of music and letting everything else sit back.”
The key to the album may be a sample of Barack Obama singing Amazing Grace at a funeral after a mass shooting in South Carolina in June. “In a situation when he could have gone very revengeful and aggressive, he chose to do that, which was a powerful statement. That’s a good way of looking at life. Gracefully going through whatever you are going through.”
So how do you clear a sample of the American president? “I’m not sure he has a publishing company,” says Champion. “You have to call the White House. Or talk to Bono.” Martin is circumspect. “I asked a friend who was going to see him. And Obama said, ‘ I’m sure we can make that happen.’ ”
Coldplay seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves. “It’s a very happy ship,” insists guitarist Jonny Buckland. “It’s practically a hovercraft!” jokes Martin.
But after seven albums, selling more than 80 million copies, there has been talk about this being their final offering.
“I think there’s a sense of a journey nearing its completion,” says Champion. “It’s not to say there’s not going to be another journey. But this is our end-ofterm report. This is what we’ve learned since our first record came out, the summary of how we have evolved as people, as friends and as a band.”
“We live in a world where you don’t know whether you are going to make it to tomorrow,” says Martin. “So it makes sense to approach whatever we are doing as if it is the last thing we are going to make.”