I don’t mind committing to record that I am a fan of Coldplay. A Rush of Blood to the Head, Parachutes and Viva La Vida … are legitimately good albums. And Fix You remains a tearjerker despite decades of overuse in medical dramas.
Yet, if your taste is better than mine, you may not know that they’re on tour. On my Instagram stories, at least, there has been a conspicuous absence of Coldplay posts, compared to the wall-to-wall coverage of the Oasis reunion shows (though I’m not convinced Oasis have more good songs in their catalogue).
When I attended last week, the stalls were packed with perhaps the most diverse and global crowd I’ve ever seen. Even the haters – not that there were any present – would have to admit Coldplay put on a dazzling show, with 3D special effects and guest performers, including Fela Kuti’s son Femi, Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna and an entire orchestra from Venezuela. In some ways it was a triumph of technology and globalisation, but as a platform, I couldn’t help feeling it was squandered.
Such was Chris Martin’s eagerness to preach peace, love and tolerance from the stage that he overshot it a bit, entreating us to direct our good feeling “to Ukraine … and Russia, Palestine … and Israel” and everywhere else besides. Well – sure. People aren’t their governments, and there’s suffering everywhere. But in those conflicts, suffering is not evenly proportioned. Elyanna sang Coldplay’s single We Pray with palpable emotion. I wondered: what would she have said if she’d expressed herself more?
Similarly, on Friday at Wembley, the closing night of the tour, Martin exhorted the crowd to “send love anywhere you wanna send it in the world”. He went on: “You can send it to Charlie Kirk’s family. You can send it to anybody’s family. You can send it to people you disagree with but you send them love anyway.” It is this lack of a definitive statement, along with the barely there acknowledgment of how genuinely divisive these issues and events are, that rendered his warm-fuzzy sentiments hollow even by stadium-rock standards, like a Christian music concert with zero mention of God.
Perhaps this really is as deep as his engagement goes: you don’t get to 10 studio albums and more than 20 years of world-dominating success by being a firebrand. And, maybe controversially, I don’t believe artists are obliged to speak out about politics: it’s generally neither edifying nor productive for the cause when they weigh in half-heartedly with word salad.
When the 1975’s Matty Healy paused their otherwise brilliant headline set at Glastonbury to elaborate banally on their “conscious decision” to eschew politics in favour of “love and friendship”, it struck a bum note for me in the crowd. No fan of the 1975 needs or expects Healy’s hazy expansions – why stop the show to say nothing?
Many artists, notably young women, do consistently address the conflict in Palestine and other struggles – Chappell Roan, Renée Rapp, Jade Thirlwall among them. Whether this reflects the higher standards placed on women in the public eye, the pressures of their politically engaged young fans or the fact that they are genuinely invested is up for debate; their frequent eloquence, and fearless references to genocide, suggests the last. But their powers of influence are limited: girls and young women are a formidable economic force, but less influential politically.
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Coldplay, on the other hand, are middle Britain. I’m willing to bet that there will have been a far greater proportion of Tory – and no doubt Reform – voters at Wembley than the other gigs I’ve attended this year. Only by the most creative interpretations of peace, love and understanding can either party be said to stand for them (loving the St George flag, maybe?). What would it mean, I wondered, for Martin to say: “And, while we’re at it, don’t vote for Nigel Farage”?
Maybe nothing. After all, Charli xcx’s “Kamala IS brat” and Swift’s “childless cat lady” endorsement didn’t get Harris over the line. And relative to many acts, Coldplay already do a lot of good – albeit for uncontroversial causes – as laid out on screens before the show: funding small music venues, cleaning up oceans, rewilding forests, generating clean energy. That’s not nothing – for their beneficiaries, it’s doubtless transformative. Though with the ongoing threat of the climate crisis, these appeals somewhat amount to an understatement of reality.
Nobody should expect political salvation from pop stars – especially Coldplay. To give the Peep Show quote routinely parroted at Coldplay fans: “People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis – you can’t trust people.” For now, the former group outnumbers the latter, but hatred is doubtless figuring more prominently in global political movements, and it is not placated or stalled by vague appeals to love. So perhaps it wouldn’t hurt for more artists to take a clear, well-defined stand, rather than aim for palatability and maximum consensus.
