Indeed, a few days after the gig, Coldplay announce a world tour in which the shows themselves will be powered by renewable energy, kinetic floors and bicycles, tour emissions 50% lower than in 2016/17, and a tree planted for every ticket sold. Manila’s loss is very much London’s gain. Tonight, as they launch their ninth outing, Music of the Spheres, fans, friends and family feel present in equal measure. What this has meant in practice is that, come new album time, cities close to Coldplay’s home bases such as LA and London have retained their access to discrete little jolts from pop’s foremost positivity engine.įor 2019’s Everyday Life album, the foursome took over London’s Natural History Museum alongside Femi Kuti and a gospel choir. Having talked the talk of the climate emergency, Coldplay, of all bands, had to not burn the aviation fuel. In 2019, Martin announced that, until the band could fill arenas from Belgium to Venezuela in carbon-neutral fashion, the jaunts that had turned Coldplay from a successful band of the Anglosphere into a vast global concern had to pause. It’s a reflex that underlines the special circumstances of this one-off gig.īefore the pandemic forced the whole world to stop touring, Coldplay presciently put their own globe-straddling juggernaut up on blocks. A t the end of Coldplay’s greatest-hits set, Chris Martin’s thanks come in a Babel of languages – Spanish, Japanese there might be Korean in there too.