Coldplay, Chris Martin

Coldplay, I beg you, stop making music

Just put the coloured paint cannons down and leave us alone


Another Brit awards, another performance from nobody’s favourite band: Coldplay.

Over the last few years, Coldplay have veered themselves into a world where if they now released their song Yellow, they would simply have to rename it Beige. They now make music for people who eat at Bella Italia, watch Taskmaster and vote for the Liberal Democrats. Their latest single, Higher Power, is a paint by numbers affair of a try hard singalong chorus that doesn’t have the big stadium anthem power it thinks it has.

The fact that the Brits opened with the UK’s most tepid band is an outrage. All we get is the same set, the same energy, the same clothes. Every. Single. Time.

I can’t take it anymore. I’ve had a bellyful. I’ve had enough of Coldplay, and here’s why:

They literally do the same colour scheme and visuals every time they perform

brits coldplay

Same shit, different day. Coldplay jumping about on a pontoon covered in henna tattoos and rave paint and then shooting coloured paint out of cannons. They’ve done this every live performance for the last eight years. Why do we allow this? There is no way in hell the industry would allow a female artist to wheel out their same tricks and stage design every performance like this without getting raked across the coals for being tired and same-y (Lana Del Rey has received criticism her entire career for only doing downbeat songs, like she’s suddenly going to get up on stage and do some Britney choreography to a Max Martin scandipop beat).

And every new song sounds the same

Sorry, Chris Martin. but you could have released Higher Power at any point in the last five years and not one of us would be any the wiser. You’ve never heard it? No problem! Because it sounds like every song on A Head Full of Dreams.

Who allowed them to open the Brits and can someone please tell me why they were on a pontoon?

Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia medley got SECOND billing to this floating horror show for… what reason, exactly?

What really twists the knife deep is who else we had primed to open the show. Rina Sawayama was there and could have blown everyone’s tits off with a performance of XS. Taylor Swift could have got up and sung a medley to prove why she was there to be the first female recipient of the Global Icon award in the first place. And lest we forget our national treasures: Little Mix. Sure, Perrie and Leigh-Anne’s recent pregnancy announcements might have halted their usual energetic, choreography heavy performances but they could have had the chance to faithfully recreate Quinn from Glee’s timeless It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World number! Alas, I’m joking. But I’d have given my left arm for some Little Mix vocals, acoustic and sat in comfy armchairs if need be.

Instead we got a pontoon nightmare we couldn’t wake up from. It was like when Green Day did that gig at the start of The Simpsons Movie – except, sadly, this one didn’t sink.

Please just give the Pyramid Stage a moment’s peace

Why do they lurk around every corner of Glastonbury? Are other bands not available? I didn’t live off a diet of super noodles for eight months just to afford a ticket to have to endure a night of Coldplay singing some soft rock pop at me!

Coldplay Brits

Okay, okay, FINE. The discography isn’t all bad

To be fair to Coldplay, one thing they actually aren’t is same-y. They’re incredibly versatile, actually. The difference between the likes of Yellow and The Scientist to the scale of Viva La Vida and Paradise (all excellent songs, even as a staunch Coldplay denouncer) is vast – and I respect to some extent Chris Martin as an energetic frontman who has clearly enamoured armies of fans globally and solidified Coldplay as one of the best selling bands of all time.

But it’s getting stagnant. I’d argue that their last hurrah was 2015’s Hymn for the Weekend, a dreamy melody of oohs and ahhs from Beyoncé made it a fun direction for their music to go and the whole aesthetic was visuals arresting in its setting and explosion of colour. Five years later, and the same visuals are still being used at the Brits! I’m tired! I’m rave painted out at this point, Chris!

Chris Martin comes out in the same clothes every time and it’s DOUBLE. STANDARDS.

Chris Martin was wearing the exact outfit he wore in the music video for Hymn for the Weekend, something that a female artist of the same level of success and global fame doing would be completely out of the question unless she was directly referencing it. That kind of complacency just being accepted speaks to wider issues in the music industry, and how the media holds female artists to a completely different standard and expectation than they do of male fronted bands and soloists.

When will the world wake up and smell the Coldplay-have-got-so-boring coffee?  But, if this kindly worded message I received in my Twitter DM requests last night is anything to go by, what the hell do I know?

Featured image: Joel Ryan/AP/Shutterstock.

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