Fresh from its SuperBowl show, Coldplay launches a stadium tour

by Chris M. Junior • photo by Julia Kennedy

In the years that pop superstars have dominated the Super Bowl halftime show, it’s actually been rare for an act to release a new album a few months before or after the big game.

Coldplay is one of those exceptions. When the British rock group headlined Super Bowl 50’s mid-game festivities Feb. 7, A Head Full of Dreams, its seventh studio effort, had been available since early December.

With more than 65,000 people in attendance at Levi’s Stadium in California, and an estimated TV audience of 115 million more—the group performed its short halftime set, which included a portion of the single “Adventure of a Lifetime.”

There’ll be plenty of time to play that track and other material from the new album as Coldplay’s 2016 tour makes stops at other football stadiums across America, among them East Rutherford’s MetLife Stadium in July.

Playing big outdoor venues again seems right; overall, the new record is more jubilant and grander than 2014’s low-key Ghost Stories, viewed by many to be lead singer Chris Martin’s “divorce album,” as it was released not long after the “conscious uncoupling” of Martin and actress Gwyneth Paltrow. He has been elusive and vague when asked about the end of his marriage, but more forthcoming about her role in A Head Full of Dreams—specifically singing on its song “Everglow.”

In a CBS Sunday Morning segment that aired in late January, Martin told reporter Anthony Mason that Paltrow’s guest spot happened “just naturally.” Along with Martin, she softly sings the lines “So how come things move on/How come cars don’t slow,” followed by “When it feels like the end of my world?” When Mason asked if those were words Paltrow said to him, Martin replied, “Yeah,” adding that it was generous of her to also sing them on the recording.

That marital relationship may be over, but the musical partnership with guitarist Jonny Buckland has remained intact since 1996, when they met at college in London. (The Coldplay lineup was complete following the addition of drummer Will Champion and bassist Guy Berryman.)

The quartet has enjoyed an astonishing commercial run in America since the release of its first full-length effort, Parachutes, in 2000. The first six studio albums have reached platinum status, and Martin and company also have a No. 1 pop single (“Viva La Vida”) and multiple Grammy Awards to go along with their Super Bowl halftime show experience.

“We sound like we always wanted to, and we feel at peace with what we’ve done to get here,” Martin told Mason. “I think when you start a band, your purpose is never to offend anybody, and when you get to a certain level of success and it’s apparent that you have offended some people … it took us a while to let that all go.”

Coldplay will perform at MetLife Stadium July 16 and 17
MetLife Stadium Drive, East Rutherford
201.559.1500 / metlifestadium.com