I think we can all agree: celebrities are so much more interesting when they’re a bit into aliens. We don’t want famous people to be just like us; they should be living lives we can barely dream of, let alone aspire to – whether that is getting zonked off their goolies on daily infusions of baby plasma, or believing the truth is out there. I’ve long been a defender of Coldplay, who, since day one, has been charged with the crimes of being beige and uncool. Well, Chris Martin is really keen on aliens right now, if the band’s Music of the Spheres tour is anything to go by, and all power to him.
The band has veered away from the melancholic alt-rock that made them famous and towards an anthemic space-pop sound that began with 2011’s Mylo Xyloto, their concept album “set on the fictional planet of Silencia”. But Martin and the band have moved on from single planets to whole galaxies: the Music of the Spheres tour has so much lore behind it that the band even built an app, where you can learn that on “the water planet” Calypso, the inhabitants speak “Aquamarine”. So yeah, on the spectrum of sci-fi worldbuilding, it’s on the Avatar end of cringe. If you are so inclined, you can also use the Coldplay app to calculate the carbon footprint of your journey to their shows (for taking the train, I am a “carbon hero”), or use AR to summon a little dancing alien called a “Kaotican” to do a jig for you. (Kaotica is “the trash planet”, FYI.)
Music of the Spheres is now a $1bn tour that has been going for two years, and will keep going until September 2025. Almost 10m tickets have been sold, making it the most attended tour of all time, surpassing even Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. So the Melbourne show starts with a surprising blip: a nervous-sounding Martin comes out to inform us that bass player Guy Berryman is “vomiting” and can’t play, the first live show he’s ever missed. Instead, a “strange, weird, alien, friend character” will be filling in for him with just 30 minutes notice. (The guy plucking bass in a space helmet is just the band’s engineer, Bill Rahko.)
Throughout the night, Martin is effusive with praise and gratitude for everyone and everything. He’s like a minister at times, frequently asking for hands in the air. He requests that we twinkle our fingers to send good vibes to “the Holy Land, to Palestine and Israel and Iran and all that”; our collective efforts cause a fireworks display.
It is all very polished, but also unbelievably contrived. The crowd is delighted when Martin stops performing A Sky Full of Stars to ask everyone to put their phones away and just be in the moment. “This is the weirdest show!” he giggles; never mind that he asks the crowd to stash their phones at that exact point of every single performance. He also bashfully claims the band hasn’t come to Australia since 2015 because he was hurt about a bad review of their last show in Brisbane. Mate, you performed two exclusive shows in Perth just last year because the West Australian government forked over $8m to Live Nation. “What I learned from that is that it’s OK if someone doesn’t like you – as long as you’re doing your best. Maybe you’re helping them by being a safe target,” Martin says, which is delightfully close to catty.
Coldplay’s commitment to reducing their environmental emissions with initiatives like a kinetic dance floor that powers batteries, compostable LED bands and generators powered by cooking oil is all hugely admirable, and may be their greatest legacy; their 59% reduction in emissions sets an amazing example to other touring acts.
But their newer milquetoast tracks about peace and love, like the woefully trite We Pray, fall flat even in a sold-out stadium. People of the Pride sounds like something Muse would have done 10 years ago. I will argue to the death that A Rush of Blood to the Head has a strange, dark urgency that still feels exciting, and Parachutes is a great debut, even if you’re bloody sick of Yellow now. But unfortunately their performances of older tracks like Clocks, Sparks and The Scientist are great reminders that Coldplay really sound a lot better when they don’t drench their guitars and drums with day-glo synths and opt for generic aphorisms over actual lyrics.
Much like their recent sound, there’s simply too much of everything in Music of the Spheres: four firework displays, endless confetti guns, streamers, an anime about fascistic robots, a tribute to Shane Warne, and interludes involving a band of alien muppets. It’s a thin line between extravaganza and incoherent silliness.