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[2016-06-04] Etihad Arena, Manchester, UK


Sparky

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As I'm back home now I'm starting to realise how much wonderful,amzing, unbielevable it has been!

The most amazing experience in my life!

 

I've waited for about 8 hours outside, I run to get near the stage and after getting it I couldn't believe what I was seeing....I can only say a big THANK YOU to them!:loveshower:

You can realise how strong,energic a joyful are them only when you see one of their concert,really!:clap::clap:

 

Just a question, that show was only broadcasted via radio and showed on tv,right?

So the cam that was recording near me was for a live dvd?:shocked2:

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I'm still too exhausted to go into details - but it was just amazing ! I was way back in the stadium and knew I was only going to see them on the screens really - but when they walked through the crowd to the C stage - they were right in front of us - fantastic surprise.:dance:

Thanks to everyone involved in this superb tour...... I'm speechless with awe.

Sad to say - no Love buttons or xylobands left for us but a very kind lady in front of me gave me hers and my eagle-eyed daughter found 3 Love buttons ON THE FLOOR ! ....... and I got a tissue star from the floor in the Metro Q....... so I came home with my precious souvenirs after all. ( Bit annoying to see a bloke on the tram with 4 xylobands on his arms - TOSSER ! :smash: )

Ah well - Chris would just say - "Be Cool, Man "

Back to my garden to relax in the sunshine now - and remember Saturday night............. :dazzled:

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As I'm back home now I'm starting to realise how much wonderful,amzing, unbielevable it has been!

The most amazing experience in my life!

 

I've waited for about 8 hours outside, I run to get near the stage and after getting it I couldn't believe what I was seeing....I can only say a big THANK YOU to them!:loveshower:

You can realise how strong,energic a joyful are them only when you see one of their concert,really!:clap::clap:

 

Just a question, that show was only broadcasted via radio and showed on tv,right?

So the cam that was recording near me was for a live dvd?:shocked2:

 

Just radio.The camera was probably for the screens rather than a dvd.If they film they have to put up notices that you being there, you are consenting for being filmed.

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I'm still too exhausted to go into details - but it was just amazing ! I was way back in the stadium and knew I was only going to see them on the screens really - but when they walked through the crowd to the C stage - they were right in front of us - fantastic surprise.:dance:

Thanks to everyone involved in this superb tour...... I'm speechless with awe.

Sad to say - no Love buttons or xylobands left for us but a very kind lady in front of me gave me hers and my eagle-eyed daughter found 3 Love buttons ON THE FLOOR ! ....... and I got a tissue star from the floor in the Metro Q....... so I came home with my precious souvenirs after all. ( Bit annoying to see a bloke on the tram with 4 xylobands on his arms - TOSSER ! :smash: )

Ah well - Chris would just say - "Be Cool, Man "

Back to my garden to relax in the sunshine now - and remember Saturday night............. :dazzled:

 

Saw a lot of people with 3 or 4 xylobands up each arm.. I doubt they all happened to go 6-8 gigs.

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My, oh, my ! As usual with a Coldplay concert, this was a pretty wild adventure !!!

 

I’m now lucky to have seen them four times, and I wish I could see them a thousand times more.

 

I just wanted to share with you my story, actually my friend Claire’s and my story, cause we went through this together and ohmygod the awesomeness of it all you guys won’t believe it :awesome:

 

 

 

 

Ok so I’m gonna skip all the difficulties we had first to actually get to that concert – but there…were a lot, between the huge fail when I bought my ticket, the stress of getting the same gate, the expensive changes in Claire’s travel plan…Man getting to that concert was a challenge!

 

Anyway, I need to tell you about the week leading up to the concert. Claire and I had had the idea of making a flag somehow. We thought it would be cool to make some presents for the band, really, and as Chris raises a flag at every concert for ETIAW, we thought this was a good idea. But of course not any flag :sneaky:

 

We decided to go for a flag that would represent the whole Coldplay fandom, as we’re not Brits so, like, a UK flag wasn’t really relevant to us. We went for a Harveytown flag, because as Chris always says, Phil is kind of their boss after all :wacky: Also, we couldn’t remember of any story about a Harveytown flag before so we figured it was perhaps a first, and that was even cooler!

 

We didn’t have much budget or time for this so we went full DIY: I took one of my sheets, we bought one of these transfer paper things, and tadaaaaaa…..

 

CkHx8BhWUAUGMA4.jpg

 

:cheesy:

 

But we weren’t stopping there. :sneaky: More and more fans have noticed that Jonny doesn’t look all that happy on stage these days since the UK tour started. So did we, and we thought we could make a fun little gift just to show some love and support….and we came up with that!!

 

qZ7b7AZG.jpg

 

It’s a t-shirt :cheesy: (with JONNY B printed on the back :awesome: )

 

We also made a cap to replace that the infamous smiley cap (that damn chilling evil smile :angry: ) but it was kind of a fail lol :awesome:

 

Finally, we recorded Claire’s request. She wasn’t sure she wanted to show her face to dozens of thousands of strangers, so we also had an amazing idea for that, you can still check it out on Instagram here:

 

[MEDIA=instagram]BGH7nazh_VG[/MEDIA]

 

This is Rex, Claire’s stuffed dinosaur :wacky: She’s been taking him everywhere with her when she travels, and made him a mascot for ColdplayCorner. We thought it would be hilarious to see Rex on a huge screen in front of 55K people :lol: ….as you now know, that didn’t happen :sad: But it was still really fun to make and I hope someone from the band or their crew saw it and had a laugh.

 

So it took us a couple of evenings in my living room to make all that. I then recorded my video on my own. That failed too :sad:

 

I left Paris to go to Manchester on Friday afternoon. Claire arrived at about midnight and we had a few hours of sleep at the hotel – we were so tired from our trips and week (exams for her, new internship for me after a few months of non-stop hardcore studying :dead: ). We saw on the nice little brochure that was mailed to us with our tickets, that the area around the stadium didn’t open until 6am. So we went there for 6am :cheesy:

 

That is mental, yes, indeed, but it is my only concert for this tour as of now, and I reaaaaaally wanted to be front row, so I wasn’t going to take any risk. The spot just at the beginning of the catwalk on Jonny’s side was mine, MINE :angry:

 

We were scared that the weather would be terrible, but we got lucky from the moment we woke up! We had a really nice, warm day which helped for the whole queuing experience (and then the concert).

 

We had booked the hotel according to our tiny budget and as close to the stadium as possible, so we only had to walk for about 15-20 minutes, and we arrived at about 6.10am! As we arrived I started freaking out because I genuinely wasn’t ready for this :bomb:

 

Hence this picture:

CkFYvkUWgAAoo1f.jpg

 

CkFYUx9WYAAO4p1.jpg

 

We realized as we arrived that we were alone there. Nobody. Was. Queueing. Yet. First at this 55k venue now how cool is that :awesome: (ok it’s definitely rather creepy or crazy than cool haha)

 

We noticed that our gate was divided into two parts: Y1 and Y2, which was super confusing. We went for the one we thought would be slightly closer to the spot we wanted to reach…but you’ll read later that this was a mistake haHAHA

 

10 minutes later, two other fans passed by to go to their gate on the opposite side of the stadium. Eventually, around 7 I think, two guys arrived to queue at our door too. They had to study while queuing as they had exams on Monday! If you’re reading this I hope you guys passed!

 

We were at gate Y. Gate Z, right next to us, was occupied as some kind of backstage area, for which the entrance was right in front of us, so throughout the day we looked at every single person coming in and out of there, with the hope of getting to meet anyone who could pass our gifts to the band. Unfortunately we didn’t meet anyone. I also DM’d Coldplay on Twitter to increase our shot at passing the gifts to them.

 

Anyway, still early in the morning, we met some amazing people that have been our friends for a while thanks to Coldplay. I don’t think they're on Coldplaying but they might be lurking… We got to spend some parts of the day with these brilliant folks and that was really awesome (except for that one dude who hates French saucisson, what a jerk ;) ).

 

As the queue slowly grew, we would play cards and watch the roadies and assistants arrive.

 

It was something like 1pm when I saw something INCREDIBLE unfold, right under my eyes. I was going back to my spot at the very front of the queue, when a man (rather handsome, I must say :charming: ) who was holding a camera and had been lurking around, asked me to let him in the queue. He came over to two guys who had been there since like 8 and 11am I think. They were talking and I kept thinking I knew them from somewhere somehow but couldn’t put a name on them. Anyway, Handsome Crew Guy asked them if they were big Coldplay fans (DUH, tbh), where they were from, how they met, since when they had been queuing. He asked again if they were big Coldplay fans and then asked them if they were interested in recording an interview for the band, backstage (like WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT)…so they were like “uh wait what really yes”. Handsome Crew Guy told them it wouldn’t take too long and that they would be back in their spot soon. Then he turned to me and asked me to stay at my spot and make sure they would get their spot back. I obviously seized the opportunity to ask him if there was any chance he could get a couple of presents across to the band somehow, but he said he wouldn’t be able to. When they eventually got back, I talked to each of them for a bit…and eventually realized it was Jamie from Sheffield and Linus from Sweden! Of course I knew these guys!! :laugh:

 

We didn’t hear much from the soundcheck apart lots of recordings of AOAL, and like 10 seconds of Army of One. I realize now that they were performing inside for Nova Red Room which kind of explains it all :lol:

 

The queue got rather big and around 3 or 3.30pm, when the security arrived and started organizing the queue to get ready for the doors to open, I started to get really nervous. A few people who had arrived much later than us seemed to be ahead of us in the queue somehow, and there were confusing tables and I don’t know I was just really nervous you know :bomb: The opening got delayed by 15 minutes :bomb::bomb: Then the other part of gate Y opened like 20 seconds before ours :bomb::bomb: Then went through security, the scan, and started rushing towards the stairs……without any Xyloband or Love Button people :( It's not that we didn't see them. They just weren't there when the doors first opened. We didn’t have time to stop so we just went straight to the barrier. We got our spot!! Woohoo!!! Turns out the corner could have been even better, as the stage isn’t as high as we thought, but it was full already anyway. We looked around and saw everyone had a Xyloband (and in some cases, several of them, although they could definitely belong to friends and family with them, or come from a previous concert), but not necessarily a love button. We were upset at the prospect of not having a Xyloband for this concert so Claire did something heroic :dazzled: She decided to go upstairs and get us the goddamn wristband! So I spread a little to make sure she could get her spot back. I was SHAKING from stress and also still not believing where we were and well probably exhaustion too haha :awesome: I started apologizing to the people nearby, telling them I was waiting for my friend to come back as we waited all day, first at the venue, but somehow without getting a wristband. They were really nice and understanding, a man even said: “oh don’t worry we’ll make sure to keep her spot too!” :wacky: She arrived just after he said that, actually, and all was right again. Phew. She managed to get a wristband for each of us, but of course had to argue with the person who was handing them out, as the instructions were obviously to get one per person, and she couldn’t prove she was actually with someone else. But it was the truth okay and this post now proves it. :lol:

 

Now was the time for us to start on Plan B to get the gifts to the band somehow. The roadies were obviously too busy. We saw Miller pass by a couple of times on the other side of the catwalk, and obviously he would’ve been busy too but he could have been our chance…

 

Alessia Cara, the first support act, started performing. She was great! She seems young but super talented, I liked her voice! But something terrible -and hilarious- happened to us during her performance. As we were watching her on the main stage, we didn’t see Miller coming on our side of the catwalk. :facepalm: We saw him just as he passed by, and we only had time to yell, in shock and horror (“OH! OH! AAAAAHHHHHHH”), that he was gone K We hated ourselves at that moment :lol: but honestly I wish it was caught on tape, I’m still laughing at this :lol:

 

But something absolutely awesome and legendary happened right after her set :awesome:

 

Suddenly, we heard the crowd on Guy’s side get really excited. We looked their way and saw PHIL, on the main stage!!! He was with two women and an adorable kid! :cheesy: The crowd was waving at Phil and he was all happy. THIS. WAS. OUR. SHOT. So we waved the flag real high, as he looked around….AND HE SPOTTED US!!!! :awesome::cheesy::awesome: He saw the flag, had the biggest smile on his face ( :wacky: :dazzled: ), he waved and gave us a thumbs up! :awesome: Still can’t quite believe it ohmygod I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment :awesome: He then showed it to the women and the kid! And we waved some more and they smiled and waved and Phil did the thumb up again :awesome::awesome:

 

So even if we couldn’t actually give him the flag, he noticed it and was happy, and that was really the most important for us, so mission 1 accomplished!! So you see that date was incredible for us before the concert had even begun :lol:

 

…AND I JUST NOTICED COLDPLAY FAVOURITED MY TWEET ABOUT THE FLAG THAT DAY WAAAAAT boy we really didn’t see anything that day did we :lol:

 

Anyway, it took us a while to get over that moment, obviously. The nice people around us saw how excited we were and the tall bald dude next to Claire was like “yeah! Awesome! You go girls!” (Tall Bald Fan if you’re here, you were awesome but like you were too tall :angry: ).

 

Lianne La Havas then came to perform and she is so talented! She also seemed truly grateful to be there, and sounded like a really nice and funny person. I didn’t know her music before but did know her by name of course.

 

And after her it was eventually time for Coldplay. I wasn’t ready and kept telling Claire I DEFINITELY was not ready and it was all coming too fast and I wasn’t ready goddamnit :bomb: Claire agreed with me and we were soooo excited.

 

Then the music (which was the same mix as the one from the Stade de France concert in Paris in 2012 :bigcry: ) stopped. And the intro began and my thoughts at that moment can only be described with a line of random letters, numbers, signs and dazzled emojis :dazzled:

 

Claire sang during the Ave Maria ( :lol: ). Then they showed the video of Coldplay fans allover the world, ending with Linus and Jamie!!! :cheesy: Then we heard the beautiful introduction with Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator. I was so emotional over it because I love it so much and it makes so much sense, it’s so relevant and I’m so happy they use it for their tour.

 

And then the concert began and I died about a dozen times over the span of two hours :cheesy: :dead: I’m mostly going to write about my highlights (although let’s face it there wasn’t any low point for me).

 

A Head Full of Dreams has been one of my favourite songs off the album since I saw the band perform at Wagram, in Paris last December. I fell in love with that song that night and June 4th was just a confirmation really. Seeing them all arrive on stage made me so happy, seeing Chris singing and hopping around and dancing made me so happy. There was this warm, almost comforting feeling somehow, like I was home and yes I was seeing my favourite band that I see on pictures every day. I got so busy with my studies the past few months, that I couldn’t follow with the tour and interviews properly. I mostly saw pictures and 30 second videos. So maybe it was just this reassuring feeling that my favourite band was still actually alive and well, and that I was where I belong (or some other cheesy stuff like that). And on the other hand, there was this overwhelming panic and excitement over being front row at a Coldplay concert again, of course :lol:

 

I think it’s their best opener (my all time favourite song still is Politik though). “I think I landed and there are miracles at work” is a rather accurate line for what you feel during the opening song of a Coldplay stadium concert :lol:

 

So as I told you we weren’t ready at all, and Claire burst into tears. I was so emotional and then noticed her crying so I ended up crying too – which doesn’t happen a lot for me. :lol: We were like “We did say we weren’t ready for it goddamnit!!”

 

It was just so beautiful :wacky: The fireworks, the song, the ChrisMartinSexyDancingMachine, the crowd….it was perfect.

 

We were standing right in front of the Flower of Life symbol on the catwalk, and that’s where Chris makes one of his first stops so you can imagine I did not take it very well :dead: We saw his belly several times hehehehehehehehhe :dazzled:

 

Chris Martin literally oozes sex appeal I don’t know how else to describe this hot man/machine/mess. :dead: :dazzled: Seriously though, the confidence that he has on stage is incredible and gets bigger with each tour. And to think he used to apologize on stage for simply performing, 15 years ago!

 

Claire kept showing him the flag and he noticed it quickly, although he didn’t react. I assume he doesn’t know about Harveytown (after all it’s mostly a thing on social media) or didn’t think it was worth reacting to :lol: But the look was enough :dazzled: God that man, how can I ever get over him :dazzled:

 

Yellow was a great moment, as it always is. I feel it’s probably something even more special in the UK, as it is their first hit ever, in their home country. It is really a special song and a particular communal moment. Chris sang some of it to his girlfriend obviously – he didn’t mention her then but when he keeps looking at a specific spot in the distance, you know someone’s here :nod::lol:

 

I have to admit that throughout the concert I kept saying “aawwww my babies aaww look at them aaawwwww” to Claire, every goddamn minute and I am grateful that she didn’t smash my face against the barrier despite that. :nod: They were just so. ADORABLE :awesome:

 

Will is so fit and majestic :dazzled: Guy is still unbearable to look at, frankly. That sexy devil. I actually caught him smiling :dazzled: Now as for Jonny, our mission to make him smile as he is the most adorable man on the planet when he does :wacky::wacky::

 

And guess what? WE DID!!!!! :awesome::awesome:

 

He noticed the t-shirt during The Scientist!!! I had been waving the shirt for a while, without really going for it. Then Claire took it from me and decided to be done with it. She properly waved it towards Jonny as the angle was perfect and the vision was clear. And the most precious thing happened :wacky::awesome: He saw it and smiled in his classic, humble and shy way, and it seemed he was genuinely grateful for it. Mission 2 accomplished! Yesssss

 

Tall Bald Fan looked at us and gave us a thumb up :lol: Now about Tall Bald Fan. His head obstructed our view a bit but man he was such a fan I forgive him :lol: We could tell he’s a drummer or just really into drums, cause he kept air-drumming for many songs :lol:

 

The Scientist still obviously makes me super emotional. It’s always such an awesome moment at their concerts….although it stole Politik’s spot and a part of me will resent this song forever for it >:( :lol:

 

It wasn't even the end for our glorious moments that night. Out of nowhere, Miller surfaced and came towards us. Claire was like "MILLERR MILLER OMG", he stopped and pointed at us, as if he was looking for specific people, seemed to say "ah, that's you, right?". Claire unfolded the flag, and he took a picture of us with the flag!!!!!!!! Roadie 42 took a picture of Claire and I with the Harveytown flag :dead: He then quickly left under the stage. It gave me the feeling that he saw us on camera and was looking for us, but maybe i'm fooled.

 

They started playing Birds and I went “YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS I WANTED THAT ONE” :lol: Claire and I went into some kind of transe during that song. We still don’t know why exactly to be honest :lol: I do really love Birds, but I never imagined to be in such state when I’d witness it live :lol: The cameraman filming the audience obviously caught that moment, however I don’t think it made it on the screens. We did hear from a friend that Claire and I appeared on the screens a couple of times. We were on fire :nod: Even after queuing 11 hours and waiting 4 more hours inside.

 

The crowd as a whole felt pretty into it from our point of view. The atmosphere was great. Across the catwalk we also spotted a White T-shirts Gang (several dudes wearing white t-shirts) who were SOOOOO excited during the whole concert! That was great!

 

The Paradise remix is also obviously another highlight, jesuschrist it is soooooooo good!!! And for the Buckin lovers out there it is obviously what replaces the GPASUYF mating dance :nod: Chris and Jonny were doing their wild thing right in front of us and it was awesome :awesome:

 

When the band got to the b-stage (killing us in the process by being way too close to us yet too far :dead: ), they stopped and turned to the screen. Muhammad Ali appeared, and we heard some incredibly meaningful words from him. It was surreal because it was so relevant to the spirit of the show. The whole crowd cheered and it was a truly emotional moment. That was a great homage. The attitude from the band particularly stroke me, as they stood still and watched the video. They could’ve just casually waited and stuff, but no they genuinely paid their respect to the late Muhammad Ali and that was beautiful.

 

We didn't see them well on the b-stage as it is further from the main the stage than for the MX tour. But we did see their four beautiful butts :dazzled::wacky:

 

Lovers in Japan was a true surprise and I loved it, especially as the introduction leading up to it was full of suspense! When Chris said to Will “let’s try it” I got so excited, we knew we were in for a special moment! :dazzled: I thought it was great, some kind of upgraded acoustic version! I love the acoustic Lovers In Japan at least as much as the original, so this was a real treat!

 

The second part of the main stage performance had me dead. On several occasions.

 

Midnight was great. I like that they only keep a small part of it. It didn’t work that well in a small venue (I was at the Casino de Paris in 2014), and it wouldn’t work for 4 minutes in a full stadium. The lasers look awesome and it manages to bring a different atmosphere. It’s a cool moment and it’s great that they turned a potentially low point from their GS concerts into a strength.

 

Then Charlie Brown came along and it’s obviously still one of the best moments in every Coldplay concert :awesome: It’s simply crazy, the crowd goes wild, it’s so much fun :awesome: The security guy in front of us was in awe :lol: The xylobands are always such a beautiful sight too :wacky: I was glad Chris took the time to do the outro on piano, as I really needed to catch my breath at the end :lol: We hadn’t had VLV yet and I needed some energy left :nod:

 

But Chris decided to change his shirt on stage :dead: At first I was busy catching my breath and looking around, then Claire freaked out, I turned and HOLYCRAP CHRIS’ BACK CHRIS’BACK CHRIS’BACK OHMYGODDDDDDDDDD

 

:| Hm.

 

So hm the people near us (including Tall Bald Fan) laughed so hard as they saw us freak out like the biggest groupies :lol: :lol:

 

It’s still embedded in my brain, that moment, you know :dead:

 

Hymn For the Weekend was a pleasant surprise as well! I did know it would be there obviously, but what I mean is that it was the best performance I had heard of it! In Paris and on tv they hadn’t quit got it right I thought, but by adding drums with Guy and Jonny, it made the song sound really well live, finally! I love the album version and now I have a live version that I can really enjoy and I’m so happy with that!

 

Then Fix You happened :dead: I was first really surprised and kinda disappointed when I noticed Chris wasn’t going to play most of it on his piano. It obviously takes away a part of the live element to it. But when you see the Xylobands light up in yellow, throughout the song, with Chris completely focusing on singing….it took my breath away. It’s a visual representation of the line “Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones”, obviously, and it is an overwhelming sight. It was insanely beautiful and emotional. He then got back to the piano for the end of the song.

 

Their cover of Heroes is a Buckin highlight of course :dazzled: Chris singing to Jonny :dazzled: Chris also plays the guitar in a particularly sexy manner during that song, I have to add :nod: The whole stadium was standing for this, great moment.

 

Viva la Vida is still a classic and I’m glad I had the time to breathe this time, because the CB+VLV combination was AWESOME but really too much to handle for me during my MX concert :dead:

 

As for the C-stage, well as you know Trouble was chosen. I had requested Ghost Story and Claire Strawberry Swing. We were obviously a bit disappointed but that version of Trouble was great!!! Also I hadn’t heard it live myself before so that was still awesome. I eventually realized that the security guy in front of us was actually singing along to it, and quite loudly! :lol: Now that was brilliant, guards usually seem so unphased.

 

Then he started thanking Debs and we realized we were getting a super old song. I had seen her tweet on twitter that she loved Sparks. The fan across the catwalk and I had the exact same reaction of shock at the exact same time actally :lol: We like: :OOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Then he announced See You Soon. Lol. I actually prefer See You Soon to Sparks so I was really happy to have it on the setlit for that night. Especially as it is an old time favourite for me. Back when I started to listen to Coldplay every day, in 2011-2012, discovering all their songs, I fell in love with See You Soon, by immediately identifying with it. I love this song so much, it means a lot to me, and I feel lucky to have heard it live. Especially as Chris added a bit of Oasis at the end in the most adorable and beautiful voice :dazzled:

 

Will and Guy were the first back on the main stage. Chris and Jonny joined them later, and they started playing Amazing Day. Amazing Buckin happened on the b-stage and catwalk as Chris took Jonny for a spin, said “Come on Jonny I know you love it” and Jonny smiled :dazzled::dazzled: I love when Jonny smiles and when Chris is happy like that :wacky: The visuals on the main screen were also awesome by the way! Absolutely stunning!

 

A sky full of stars was pretty damn awesome. The confetti got all over us and were lost in this mess, and so was Chris :dazzled: He was right next to us but we could barely see him. And suddenly, right in front of us, we see this guy coming out of nowhere towards Chris. You heard Chris played it cool, and indeed he danced with him. But the look on his face wasn’t happy and playful at all. You could tell he wasn’t cool with it at all, which is normal cause this stranger could have been real dangerous. So he danced with him for two seconds, then let him go/made him go away in a perfect gesture, like “okay buy now I don’t actually like you get out” :lol: It kinda ruined the moment for me, we were so into the song and that jerk disrupted the whole thing. Thankfully Chris is the best at handling this kind of things, but this is the second time this tour and I hope it doesn’t happen again. The venues need to up their security. Stop focusing on our cute little flags barely obstructing the barrier and focus more on crazy people :angry:

 

And then it was the end. Already :'( :'( :'( Up&Up is such a beautiful ending. I wish more people would sing along to it, or that there was a way we could hear the crowd more than the recorded choir. But anyway I loved it so much. Up & Up is their most important song since Politik and it is so relevant.

 

As they were waving a crowd, we showed the t-shirt to Jonny again and he saw it again and smiled :dazzled: My baby :dazzled:

 

And then they were gone. My babies :bigcry:

 

We went to see our friends again and exchanged stories. We bought the tour book :awesome: We walked for ages to the city center to get some food, then go back to the hotel. On our way, at a cross road, some dudes yelled at us from their car: “COLDPLAAAAYYYYYY MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!” Hell yeah :awesome: We also heard some Coldplay albums being played in several cars. Hehe :charming:

 

But my story doesn’t end here. Lmao sorry guys this isn’t over yet I still have some crazy stuff to tell you about :awesome:

 

The next day, on the Sunday, we went to the city center for a walk. We first tried to go to the Cuba Café, as a Coldplay landmark of sorts, but it was closed when we got there. We then went to the hotel where they supposedly stayed. We weren’t really comfortable with that as it’s not something common for Coldplay fans to do in the UK, so we weren’t going to stay there long. It was just a bonus in case they happened to be there somehow at the same time as us, to finally hand them the presents. They definitely weren’t there, but quite a few people were waiting. It looked curious, as none of them showed signs of being Coldplay fans. We were sitting a bit far from the entrance door, when a crowd rushed towards a man who had just got out of there. We didn’t recognize him, but we rushed to see him, just in case. Turns out it was Jack Whitehall!!!! :lol::lol::lol: Few minutes later, a man that we still haven’t identified was also very popular, we saw a guy rushing to him with a football shoe so we assumed he was a famous, former footballer :nod: Then we saw a girl with a One Direction t-shirt, and I remembered that a friend texted me after the concert to tell me Niall Horan was there. It all made sense now :lol:

 

We left shortly after that to enjoy a stroll in a particularly warm and sunny Manchester :dazzled: We kept seeing confetti and people wearing love buttons or Coldplay merch :awesome::dazzled: We stopped at Vinyl Exchange, as I was looking for specific vinyls for my sister. I didn’t find any of them, but I did find the Talk CD/DVD thing for £2! :cheesy:

 

We finally had to leave to the airport. Even at the airport, we saw some Coldplay fans :lol:

 

And it doesn’t even end here :lol: Claire and I weren’t on the same plane, and I ended up sitting near a particular handsome guy :dazzled: We talked a little and guess what? Hot Plane Guy saw Coldplay when they were supporting Muse at a small venue in London back in the days :o :dead: What are the chances :lol: He didn’t look old so I assume he was a teenager when he saw them. I love how Coldplay is so huge, everyone seems to have their little story with them or their music.

 

AND THAT’S IT.

 

This weekend was wild and this concert was my best Coldplay concert yet. One of my biggest dreams was to see them front row at a small venue and that happened in December. It meant so much to me at that time, right after the attacks. And somehow this concert in Manchester was just as great, in a completely different way. I think that as it was the fourth time, I got to actually enjoy the experience a bit more instead of being shocked and completely overwhelmed the whole time. Also, AHFOD means the world to me. I can never pick a favourite album, but this one has been with me through my most challenging year so far. It was a therapeutic album after the attacks (I was lucky not to have been hurt by it in any way, but, you know, as I live in Paris it still hit pretty hard), and on an unrelated subject it made me want to fall in love again, AND, on top of everything, it was with me throughout my final school project, the biggest I’ve ever done. I spent a few all nighters on it, and the only album on my phone was AHFOD, so I spent nights listening to it like 6 times in a row to keep me awake, without ever getting sick of it. Army Of One has become one of my favourite anthems, Up&Up is one their most important songs, and this album just really makes sense to me.

 

I love Coldplay so much and I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened to me ever since I got into them. To the next time, my precious :dazzled:

 

Sorry for this comically huge wall of text by the way

 

 

Here are some pics:

13390938_10209917178546043_2077308822_n.jpg?oh=18b2881d57c5cd9308273620c7088c7e&oe=5759D75B

 

13407343_10209909657598024_1009969271_n.jpg?oh=8bd392307db919513a393773e6633efe&oe=5759AA19

 

13388976_10209909658318042_1755938553_o.jpg?oh=ec8d372810a8ffb3d882d8a9afbec853&oe=57598EAF

 

13392961_10209909659518072_155305214_n.jpg?oh=ccf70e973bbae34af0ec4c2a182cfd19&oe=5758C1FF

 

13401299_10209909661398119_1435161331_n.jpg?oh=dea1f520cbc7ecf08c7a7062763d70d1&oe=5758CADA Fix You :dead:

 

13410543_10209909661798129_50589153_o.jpg?oh=a979929efe6e7ac30558086c481ae1d9&oe=5759C190

 

13384838_10209909663878181_105491518_n.jpg?oh=964be28faafb7bd120932cf2aa35f100&oe=5759CA03

 

13382185_10209909664078186_1643680359_n.jpg?oh=5c9f90d7fc1f4bc3fffa886e3c053506&oe=5759E732

 

13383661_10209909664438195_686402209_o.jpg?oh=54a824de122278380158ee51a0af3101&oe=5759EB3F Amazing Day :dazzled:

 

13396963_10209909664558198_49068985_o.jpg?oh=bb45d2ae310576dfbbc5705f019107c2&oe=575992E8

 

13393127_10209909664638200_877296645_n.jpg?oh=405a15f07b11269297d792bb41822f41&oe=5759B123 Confetti on the ground looking like a fckin rainbow now if that's not Coldplay magic :awesome:

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My, oh, my ! As usual with a Coldplay concert, this was a pretty wild adventure !!!

 

I’m now lucky to have seen them four times, and I wish I could see them a thousand times more.

 

I just wanted to share with you my story, actually my friend Claire’s and my story, cause we went through this together and ohmygod the awesomeness of it all you guys won’t believe it :awesome:

 

 

 

 

Ok so I’m gonna skip all the difficulties we had first to actually get to that concert – but there…were a lot, between the huge fail when I bought my ticket, the stress of getting the same gate, the expensive changes in Claire’s travel plan…Man getting to that concert was a challenge!

 

Anyway, I need to tell you about the week leading up to the concert. Claire and I had had the idea of making a flag somehow. We thought it would be cool to make some presents for the band, really, and as Chris raises a flag at every concert for ETIAW, we thought this was a good idea. But of course not any flag :sneaky:

 

We decided to go for a flag that would represent the whole Coldplay fandom, as we’re not Brits so, like, a UK flag wasn’t really relevant to us. We went for a Harveytown flag, because as Chris always says, Phil is kind of their boss after all :wacky: Also, we couldn’t remember of any story about a Harveytown flag before so we figured it was perhaps a first, and that was even cooler!

 

We didn’t have much budget or time for this so we went full DIY: I took one of my sheets, we bought one of these transfer paper things, and tadaaaaaa…..

 

CkHx8BhWUAUGMA4.jpg

 

:cheesy:

 

But we weren’t stopping there. :sneaky: More and more fans have noticed that Jonny doesn’t look all that happy on stage these days since the UK tour started. So did we, and we thought we could make a fun little gift just to show some love and support….and we came up with that!!

 

qZ7b7AZG.jpg

 

It’s a t-shirt :cheesy: (with JONNY B printed on the back :awesome: )

 

We also made a cap to replace that the infamous smiley cap (that damn chilling evil smile :angry: ) but it was kind of a fail lol :awesome:

 

Finally, we recorded Claire’s request. She wasn’t sure she wanted to show her face to dozens of thousands of strangers, so we also had an amazing idea for that, you can still check it out on Instagram here:

 

[MEDIA=instagram]BGH7nazh_VG[/MEDIA]

 

This is Rex, Claire’s stuffed dinosaur :wacky: She’s been taking him everywhere with her when she travels, and made him a mascot for ColdplayCorner. We thought it would be hilarious to see Rex on a huge screen in front of 55K people :lol: ….as you now know, that didn’t happen :sad: But it was still really fun to make and I hope someone from the band or their crew saw it and had a laugh.

 

So it took us a couple of evenings in my living room to make all that. I then recorded my video on my own. That failed too :sad:

 

I left Paris to go to Manchester on Friday afternoon. Claire arrived at about midnight and we had a few hours of sleep at the hotel – we were so tired from our trips and week (exams for her, new internship for me after a few months of non-stop hardcore studying :dead: ). We saw on the nice little brochure that was mailed to us with our tickets, that the area around the stadium didn’t open until 6am. So we went there for 6am :cheesy:

 

That is mental, yes, indeed, but it is my only concert for this tour as of now, and I reaaaaaally wanted to be front row, so I wasn’t going to take any risk. The spot just at the beginning of the catwalk on Jonny’s side was mine, MINE >:(

 

We were scared that the weather would be terrible, but we got lucky from the moment we woke up! We had a really nice, warm day which helped for the whole queuing experience (and then the concert).

 

We had booked the hotel according to our tiny budget and as close to the stadium as possible, so we only had to walk for about 15-20 minutes, and we arrived at about 6.10am! As we arrived I started freaking out because I genuinely wasn’t ready for this :bomb:

 

Hence this picture:

CkFYvkUWgAAoo1f.jpg

 

CkFYUx9WYAAO4p1.jpg

 

We realized as we arrived that we were alone there. Nobody. Was. Queueing. Yet. First at this 55k venue now how cool is that :awesome: (ok it’s definitely rather creepy or crazy than cool haha)

 

We noticed that our gate was divided into two parts: Y1 and Y2, which was super confusing. We went for the one we thought would be slightly closer to the spot we wanted to reach…but you’ll read later that this was a mistake haHAHA

 

10 minutes later, two other fans passed by to go to their gate on the opposite side of the stadium. Eventually, around 7 I think, two guys arrived to queue at our door too. They had to study while queuing as they had exams on Monday! If you’re reading this I hope you guys passed!

 

We were at gate Y. Gate Z, right next to us, was occupied as some kind of backstage area, for which the entrance was right in front of us, so throughout the day we looked at every single person coming in and out of there, with the hope of getting to meet anyone who could pass our gifts to the band. Unfortunately we didn’t meet anyone. I also DM’d Coldplay on Twitter to increase our shot at passing the gifts to them.

 

Anyway, still early in the morning, we met some amazing people that have been our friends for a while thanks to Coldplay. I don’t think on Coldplaying but they might be lurking… We got to spend some parts of the day with these brilliant folks and that was really awesome (except for that one dude who hates French saucisson, what a jerk ;) ).

 

As the queue slowly grew, we would play cards and watch the roadies and assistants arrive.

 

It was something like 1pm when I saw something INCREDIBLE unfold, right under my eyes. I was going back to my spot at the very front of the queue, when a man (rather handsome, I must say :charming: ) who was holding a camera and had been lurking around, asked me to let him in the queue. He came over to two guys who had been there since like 8 and 11am I think. They were talking and I kept thinking I knew them from somewhere somehow but couldn’t put a name on them. Anyway, Handsome Crew Guy asked them if they were big Coldplay fans (DUH, tbh), where they were from, how they met, since when they had been queuing. He asked again if they were big Coldplay fans and then asked them if they were interested in recording an interview for the band, backstage (like WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT)…so they were like “uh wait what really yes”. Handsome Crew Guy told them it wouldn’t take too long and that they would be back in their spot soon. Then he turned to me and asked me to stay at my spot and make sure they would get their spot back. I obviously seized the opportunity to ask him if there was any chance he could get a couple of presents across to the band somehow, but he said he wouldn’t be able to. When they eventually got back, I talked to each of them for a bit…and eventually realized it was Jamie from Sheffield and Linus from Sweden! Of course I knew these guys!! :laugh:

 

We didn’t hear much from the soundcheck apart lots of recordings of AOAL, and like 10 seconds of Army of One. I realize now that they were performing inside for Nova Red Room which kind of explains it all :lol:

 

The queue got rather big and around 3 or 3.30pm, when the security arrived and started organizing the queue to get ready for the doors to open, I started to get really nervous. A few people who had arrived much later than us seemed to be ahead of us in the queue somehow, and there were confusing tables and I don’t know I was just really nervous you know :bomb: The opening got delayed by 15 minutes :bomb::bomb: Then the other part of gate Y opened like 20 seconds before ours :bomb::bomb: Then went through security, the scan, and started rushing towards the stairs……without any Xyloband or Love Button people J We didn’t have time to stop so we just went straight to the barrier. We got our spot!! Woohoo!!! Turns out the corner could have been even better, as the stage isn’t as high as we thought, but it was full already anyway. We looked around and saw everyone had a Xyloband (and in some cases, several of them, although they could definitely belong to friends and family with them, or come from a previous concert), but not necessarily a love button. We were upset at the prospect of not having a Xyloband for this concert so Claire did something heroic :dazzled: She decided to go upstairs and get us the goddamn wristband! So I spread a little to make sure she could get her spot back. I was SHAKING from stress and also still not believing where we were and well probably exhaustion too haha :awesome: I started apologizing to the people nearby, telling them I was waiting for my friend to come back as we waited all day, first at the venue, but somehow without getting a wristband. They were really nice and understanding, a man even said: “oh don’t worry we’ll make sure to keep her spot too!” :wacky: She arrived just after he said that, actually, and all was right again. Phew. She managed to get a wristband for each of us, but of course had to argue with the person who was handing them out, as the instructions were obviously to get one per person, and she couldn’t prove she was actually with someone else. But it was the truth okay and this post now proves it. :lol:

 

Now was the time for us to start on Plan B to get the gifts to the band somehow. The roadies were obviously too busy. We saw Miller pass by a couple of times on the other side of the catwalk, and obviously he would’ve been busy too but he could have been our chance…

 

Alessia Cara, the first support act, started performing. She was great! She seems young but super talented, I liked her voice! But something terrible -and hilarious- happened to us during her performance. As we were watching her on the main stage, we didn’t see Miller coming on our side of the catwalk. :facepalm: We saw him just as he passed by, and we only had time to yell, in shock and horror (“OH! OH! AAAAAHHHHHHH”), that he was gone K We hated ourselves at that moment :lol: but honestly I wish it was caught on tape, I’m still laughing at this :lol:

 

But something absolutely awesome and legendary happened right after her set :awesome:

 

Suddenly, we heard the crowd on Guy’s side get really excited. We looked their way and saw PHIL, on the main stage!!! He was with two women and an adorable kid! :cheesy: The crowd was waving at Phil and he was all happy. THIS. WAS. OUR. SHOT. So we waved the flag real high, as he looked around….AND HE SPOTTED US!!!! :awesome::cheesy::awesome: He saw the flag, had the biggest smile on his face ( :wacky: :dazzled: ), he waved and gave us a thumbs up! :awesome: Still can’t quite believe it ohmygod I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment :awesome: He then showed it to the women and the kid! And we waved some more and they smiled and waved and Phil did the thumb up again :awesome::awesome:

 

So even if we couldn’t actually give him the flag, he noticed it and was happy, and that was really the most important for us, so mission 1 accomplished!! So you see that date was incredible for us before the concert had even begun :lol:

 

…AND I JUST NOTICED COLDPLAY FAVOURITED MY TWEET ABOUT THE FLAG THAT DAY WAAAAAT boy we really didn’t see anything that day did we :lol:

 

Anyway, it took us a while to get over that moment, obviously. The nice people around us saw how excited we were and the tall bald dude next to Claire was like “yeah! Awesome! You go girls!” (Tall Bald Fan if you’re here, you were awesome but like you were too tall >:( ).

 

Lianne La Havas then came to perform and she is so talented! She also seemed truly grateful to be there, and sounded like a really nice and funny person. I didn’t know her music before but did know her by name of course.

 

And after her it was eventually time for Coldplay. I wasn’t ready and kept telling Claire I DEFINITELY was not ready and it was all coming too fast and I wasn’t ready goddamnit :bomb: Claire agreed with me and we were soooo excited.

 

Then the music (which was the same mix as the one from the Stade de France concert in Paris in 2012 :bigcry: ) stopped. And the intro began and my thoughts at that moment can only be described with a line of random letters, numbers, signs and dazzled emojis :dazzled:

 

Claire sang during the Ave Maria ( :lol: ). Then they showed the video of Coldplay fans allover the world, ending with Linus and Jamie!!! :cheesy: Then we heard the beautiful introduction with Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator. I was so emotional over it because I love it so much and it makes so much sense, it’s so relevant and I’m so happy they use it for their tour.

 

And then the concert began and I died about a dozen times over the span of two hours :cheesy: :dead: I’m mostly going to write about my highlights (although let’s face it there wasn’t any low point for me).

 

A Head Full of Dreams has been one of my favourite songs off the album since I saw the band perform at Wagram, in Paris last December. I fell in love with that song that night and June 4th was just a confirmation really. Seeing them all arrive on stage made me so happy, seeing Chris singing and hopping around and dancing made me so happy. There was this warm, almost comforting feeling somehow, like I was home and yes I was seeing my favourite band that I see on pictures every day. I got so busy with my studies the past few months, that I couldn’t follow with the tour and interviews properly. I mostly saw pictures and 30 second videos. So maybe it was just this reassuring feeling that my favourite band was still actually alive and well, and that I was where I belong (or some other cheesy stuff like that). And on the other hand, there was this overwhelming panic and excitement over being front row at a Coldplay concert again, of course :lol:

 

I think it’s their best opener (my all time favourite song still is Politik though). “I think I landed and there are miracles at work” is a rather accurate line for what you feel during the opening song of a Coldplay stadium concert :lol:

 

So as I told you we weren’t ready at all, and Claire burst into tears. I was so emotional and then noticed her crying so I ended up crying too – which doesn’t happen a lot for me. :lol: We were like “We did say we weren’t ready for it goddamnit!!”

 

It was just so beautiful :wacky: The fireworks, the song, the ChrisMartinSexyDancingMachine, the crowd….it was perfect.

 

We were standing right in front of the Flower of Life symbol on the catwalk, and that’s where Chris makes one of his first stops so you can imagine I did not take it very well :dead: We saw his belly several times hehehehehehehehhe :dazzled:

 

Chris Martin literally oozes sex appeal I don’t know how else to describe this hot man/machine/mess. :dead: :dazzled: Seriously though, the confidence that he has on stage is incredible and gets bigger with each tour. And to think he used to apologize on stage for simply performing, 15 years ago!

 

Claire kept showing him the flag and he noticed it quickly, although he didn’t react. I assume he doesn’t know about Harveytown (after all it’s mostly a thing on social media) or didn’t think it was worth reacting to :lol: But the look was enough :dazzled: God that man, how can I ever get over him :dazzled:

 

Yellow was a great moment, as it always is. I feel it’s probably something even more special in the UK, as it is their first hit ever, in their home country. It is really a special song and a particular communal moment. Chris sang some of it to his girlfriend obviously – he didn’t mention her then but when he keeps looking at a specific spot in the distance, you know someone’s here :nod::lol:

 

I have to admit that throughout the concert I kept saying “aawwww my babies aaww look at them aaawwwww” to Claire, every goddamn minute and I am grateful that she didn’t smash my face against the barrier despite that. :nod: They were just so. ADORABLE :awesome:

 

Will is so fit and majestic :dazzled: Guy is still unbearable to look at, frankly. That sexy devil. I actually caught him smiling :dazzled: Now as for Jonny, our mission to make him smile as he is the most adorable man on the planet when he does :wacky::wacky::

 

And guess what? WE DID!!!!! :awesome::awesome:

 

He noticed the t-shirt during The Scientist!!! I had been waving the shirt for a while, without really going for it. Then Claire took it from me and decided to be done with it. She properly waved it towards Jonny as the angle was perfect and the vision was clear. And the most precious thing happened :wacky::awesome: He saw it and smiled in his classic, humble and shy way, and it seemed he was genuinely grateful for it. Mission 2 accomplished! Yesssss

 

Tall Bald Fan looked at us and gave us a thumb up :lol: Now about Tall Bald Fan. His head obstructed our view a bit but man he was such a fan I forgive him :lol: We could tell he’s a drummer or just really into drums, cause he kept air-drumming for many songs :lol:

 

The Scientist still obviously makes me super emotional. It’s always such an awesome moment at their concerts….although it stole Politik’s spot and a part of me will resent this song forever for it >:( :lol:

 

It wasn't even the end for our glorious moments that night. Out of nowhere, Miller surfaced and came towards us. Claire was like "MILLERR MILLER OMG", he stopped and pointed at us, as if he was looking for specific people, seemed to say "ah, that's you, right?". Claire unfolded the flag, and he took a picture of us with the flag!!!!!!!! Roadie 42 took a picture of Claire and I with the Harveytown flag :dead: He then quickly left under the stage. It gave me the feeling that he saw us on camera and was looking for us, but maybe i'm fooled.

 

They started playing Birds and I went “YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS I WANTED THAT ONE” :lol: Claire and I went into some kind of transe during that song. We still don’t know why exactly to be honest :lol: I do really love Birds, but I never imagined to be in such state when I’d witness it live :lol: The cameraman filming the audience obviously caught that moment, however I don’t think it made it on the screens. We did hear from a friend that Claire and I appeared on the screens a couple of times. We were on fire :nod: Even after queuing 11 hours and waiting 4 more hours inside.

 

The crowd as a whole felt pretty into it from our point of view. The atmosphere was great. Across the catwalk we also spotted a White T-shirts Gang (several dudes wearing white t-shirts) who were SOOOOO excited during the whole concert! That was great!

 

The Paradise remix is also obviously another highlight, jesuschrist it is soooooooo good!!! And for the Buckin lovers out there it is obviously what replaces the GPASUYF mating dance :nod: Chris and Jonny were doing their wild thing right in front of us and it was awesome :awesome:

 

When the band got to the b-stage (killing us in the process by being way too close to us yet too far :dead: ), they stopped and turned to the screen. Muhammad Ali appeared, and we heard some incredibly meaningful words from him. It was surreal because it was so relevant to the spirit of the show. The whole crowd cheered and it was a truly emotional moment. That was a great homage. The attitude from the band particularly stroke me, as they stood still and watched the video. They could’ve just casually waited and stuff, but no they genuinely paid their respect to the late Muhammad Ali and that was beautiful.

 

We didn't see them well on the b-stage as it is further from the main the stage than for the MX tour. But we did see their four beautiful butts :dazzled::wacky:

 

Lovers in Japan was a true surprise and I loved it, especially as the introduction leading up to it was full of suspense! When Chris said to Will “let’s try it” I got so excited, we knew we were in for a special moment! :dazzled: I thought it was great, some kind of upgraded acoustic version! I love the acoustic Lovers In Japan at least as much as the original, so this was a real treat!

 

The second part of the main stage performance had me dead. On several occasions.

 

Midnight was great. I like that they only keep a small part of it. It didn’t work that well in a small venue (I was at the Casino de Paris in 2014), and it wouldn’t work for 4 minutes in a full stadium. The lasers look awesome and it manages to bring a different atmosphere. It’s a cool moment and it’s great that they turned a potentially low point from their GS concerts into a strength.

 

Then Charlie Brown came along and it’s obviously still one of the best moments in every Coldplay concert :awesome: It’s simply crazy, the crowd goes wild, it’s so much fun :awesome: The security guy in front of us was in awe :lol: The xylobands are always such a beautiful sight too :wacky: I was glad Chris took the time to do the outro on piano, as I really needed to catch my breath at the end :lol: We hadn’t had VLV yet and I needed some energy left :nod:

 

But Chris decided to change his shirt on stage :dead: At first I was busy catching my breath and looking around, then Claire freaked out, I turned and HOLYCRAP CHRIS’ BACK CHRIS’BACK CHRIS’BACK OHMYGODDDDDDDDDD

 

:| Hm.

 

So hm the people near us (including Tall Bald Fan) laughed so hard as they saw us freak out like the biggest groupies :lol: :lol:

 

It’s still embedded in my brain, that moment, you know :dead:

 

Hymn For the Weekend was a pleasant surprise as well! I did know it would be there obviously, but what I mean is that it was the best performance I had heard of it! In Paris and on tv they hadn’t quit got it right I thought, but by adding drums with Guy and Jonny, it made the song sound really well live, finally! I love the album version and now I have a live version that I can really enjoy and I’m so happy with that!

 

Then Fix You happened :dead: I was first really surprised and kinda disappointed when I noticed Chris wasn’t going to play most of it on his piano. It obviously takes away a part of the live element to it. But when you see the Xylobands light up in yellow, throughout the song, with Chris completely focusing on singing….it took my breath away. It’s a visual representation of the line “Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones”, obviously, and it is an overwhelming sight. It was insanely beautiful and emotional. He then got back to the piano for the end of the song.

 

Their cover of Heroes is a Buckin highlight of course :dazzled: Chris singing to Jonny :dazzled: Chris also plays the guitar in a particularly sexy manner during that song, I have to add :nod: The whole stadium was standing for this, great moment.

 

Viva la Vida is still a classic and I’m glad I had the time to breathe this time, because the CB+VLV combination was AWESOME but really too much to handle for me during my MX concert :dead:

 

As for the C-stage, well as you know Trouble was chosen. I had requested Ghost Story and Claire Strawberry Swing. We were obviously a bit disappointed but that version of Trouble was great!!! Also I hadn’t heard it live myself before so that was still awesome. I eventually realized that the security guy in front of us was actually singing along to it, and quite loudly! :lol: Now that was brilliant, guards usually seem so unphased.

 

Then he started thanking Debs and we realized we were getting a super old song. I had seen her tweet on twitter that she loved Sparks. The fan across the catwalk and I had the exact same reaction of shock at the exact same time actally :lol: We like: :OOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Then he announced See You Soon. Lol. I actually prefer See You Soon to Sparks so I was really happy to have it on the setlit for that night. Especially as it is an old time favourite for me. Back when I started to listen to Coldplay every day, in 2011-2012, discovering all their songs, I fell in love with See You Soon, by immediately identifying with it. I love this song so much, it means a lot to me, and I feel lucky to have heard it live. Especially as Chris added a bit of Oasis at the end in the most adorable and beautiful voice :dazzled:

 

Will and Guy were the first back on the main stage. Chris and Jonny joined them later, and they started playing Amazing Day. Amazing Buckin happened on the b-stage and catwalk as Chris took Jonny for a spin, said “Come on Jonny I know you love it” and Jonny smiled :dazzled::dazzled: I love when Jonny smiles and when Chris is happy like that :wacky: The visuals on the main screen were also awesome by the way! Absolutely stunning!

 

A sky full of stars was pretty damn awesome. The confetti got all over us and were lost in this mess, and so was Chris :dazzled: He was right next to us but we could barely see him. And suddenly, right in front of us, we see this guy coming out of nowhere towards Chris. You heard Chris played it cool, and indeed he danced with him. But the look on his face wasn’t happy and playful at all. You could tell he wasn’t cool with it at all, which is normal cause this stranger could have been real dangerous. So he danced with him for two seconds, then let him go/made him go away in a perfect gesture, like “okay buy now I don’t actually like you get out” :lol: It kinda ruined the moment for me, we were so into the song and that jerk disrupted the whole thing. Thankfully Chris is the best at handling this kind of things, but this is the second time this tour and I hope it doesn’t happen again. The venues need to up their security. Stop focusing on our cute little flags barely obstructing the barrier and focus more on crazy people :angry:

 

And then it was the end. Already :'( :'( :'( Up&Up is such a beautiful ending. I wish more people would sing along to it, or that there was a way we could hear the crowd more than the recorded choir. But anyway I loved it so much. Up & Up is their most important song since Politik and it is so relevant.

 

As they were waving a crowd, we showed the t-shirt to Jonny again and he saw it again and smiled :dazzled: My baby :dazzled:

 

And then they were gone. My babies L

 

We went to see our friends again and exchanged stories. We bought the tour book :awesome: We walked for ages to the city center to get some food, then go back to the hotel. On our way, at a cross road, some dudes yelled at us from their car: “COLDPLAAAAYYYYYY MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!” Hell yeah :awesome: We also heard some Coldplay albums being played in several cars. Hehe :charming:

 

But my story doesn’t end here. Lmao sorry guys this isn’t over yet I still have some crazy stuff to tell you about :awesome:

 

The next day, on the Sunday, we went to the city center for a walk. We first tried to go to the Cuba Café, as a Coldplay landmark of sorts, but it was closed when we got there. We then went to the hotel where they supposedly stayed. We weren’t really comfortable with that as it’s not something common for Coldplay fans to do in the UK, so we weren’t going to stay there long. It was just a bonus in case they happened to be there somehow at the same time as us, to finally hand them the presents. They definitely weren’t there, but quite a few people were waiting. It looked curious, as none of them showed signs of being Coldplay fans. We were sitting a bit far from the entrance door, when a crowd rushed towards a man who had just got out of there. We didn’t recognize him, but we rushed to see him, just in case. Turns out it was Jack Whitehall!!!! :lol::lol::lol: Few minutes later, a man that we still haven’t identified was also very popular, we saw a guy rushing to him with a football shoe so we assumed he was a famous, former footballer :nod: Then we saw a girl with a One Direction t-shirt, and I remembered that a friend texted me after the concert to tell me Niall Horan was there. It all made sense now :lol:

 

We left shortly after that to enjoy a stroll in a particularly warm and sunny Manchester :dazzled: We kept seeing confetti and people wearing love buttons or Coldplay merch :awesome::dazzled: We stopped at Vinyl Exchange, as I was looking for specific vinyls for my sister. I didn’t find any of them, but I did find the Talk CD/DVD thing for £2! :cheesy:

 

We finally had to leave to the airport. Even at the airport, we saw some Coldplay fans :lol:

 

And it doesn’t even end here :lol: Claire and I weren’t on the same plane, and I ended up sitting near a particular handsome guy :dazzled: We talked a little and guess what? Hot Plane Guy saw Coldplay when they were supporting Muse at a small venue in London back in the days :o :dead: What are the chances :lol: He didn’t look old so I assume he was a teenager when he saw them. I love how Coldplay is so huge, everyone seems to have their little story with them or their music.

 

AND THAT’S IT.

 

This weekend was wild and this concert was my best Coldplay concert yet. One of my biggest dreams was to see them front row at a small venue and that happened in December. It meant so much to me at that time, right after the attacks. And somehow this concert in Manchester was just as great, in a completely different way. I think that as it was the fourth time, I got to actually enjoy the experience a bit more instead of being shocked and completely overwhelmed the whole time. Also, AHFOD means the world to me. I can never pick a favourite album, but this one has been with me through my most challenging year so far. It was a therapeutic album after the attacks (I was lucky not to have been hurt by it in any way, but, you know, as I live in Paris it still hit pretty hard), and on an unrelated subject it made me want to fall in love again, AND, on top of everything, it was with me throughout my final school project, the biggest I’ve ever done. I spent a few all nighters on it, and the only album on my phone was AHFOD, so I spent nights listening to it like 6 times in a row to keep me awake, without ever getting sick of it. Army Of One has become one of my favourite anthems, Up&Up is one their most important songs, and this album just really makes sense to me.

 

I love Coldplay so much and I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened to me ever since I got into them. To the next time, my precious :dazzled:

 

Sorry for this comically huge wall of text by the way

 

 

I'll add some pics tomorrow but I have to sleep now :lol:

 

Great writeup, loved it :D happy u managed to get to your spot even tho the other gate opened first, and that u got ur hands on the wristbands in the end. We had to do the same thing with going back for it... Idk what was up with our entrance cause everyone else had one :o

 

Oh and i wish i would've talked to u guys earlier tbh, but i'm a bit shit at talking to new people like that, so maybe next time (if that ever happens) :)

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My, oh, my ! As usual with a Coldplay concert, this was a pretty wild adventure !!!

 

I’m now lucky to have seen them four times, and I wish I could see them a thousand times more.

 

I just wanted to share with you my story, actually my friend Claire’s and my story, cause we went through this together and ohmygod the awesomeness of it all you guys won’t believe it :awesome:

 

 

 

 

Ok so I’m gonna skip all the difficulties we had first to actually get to that concert – but there…were a lot, between the huge fail when I bought my ticket, the stress of getting the same gate, the expensive changes in Claire’s travel plan…Man getting to that concert was a challenge!

 

Anyway, I need to tell you about the week leading up to the concert. Claire and I had had the idea of making a flag somehow. We thought it would be cool to make some presents for the band, really, and as Chris raises a flag at every concert for ETIAW, we thought this was a good idea. But of course not any flag :sneaky:

 

We decided to go for a flag that would represent the whole Coldplay fandom, as we’re not Brits so, like, a UK flag wasn’t really relevant to us. We went for a Harveytown flag, because as Chris always says, Phil is kind of their boss after all :wacky: Also, we couldn’t remember of any story about a Harveytown flag before so we figured it was perhaps a first, and that was even cooler!

 

We didn’t have much budget or time for this so we went full DIY: I took one of my sheets, we bought one of these transfer paper things, and tadaaaaaa…..

 

CkHx8BhWUAUGMA4.jpg

 

:cheesy:

 

But we weren’t stopping there. :sneaky: More and more fans have noticed that Jonny doesn’t look all that happy on stage these days since the UK tour started. So did we, and we thought we could make a fun little gift just to show some love and support….and we came up with that!!

 

qZ7b7AZG.jpg

 

It’s a t-shirt :cheesy: (with JONNY B printed on the back :awesome: )

 

We also made a cap to replace that the infamous smiley cap (that damn chilling evil smile :angry: ) but it was kind of a fail lol :awesome:

 

Finally, we recorded Claire’s request. She wasn’t sure she wanted to show her face to dozens of thousands of strangers, so we also had an amazing idea for that, you can still check it out on Instagram here:

 

[MEDIA=instagram]BGH7nazh_VG[/MEDIA]

 

This is Rex, Claire’s stuffed dinosaur :wacky: She’s been taking him everywhere with her when she travels, and made him a mascot for ColdplayCorner. We thought it would be hilarious to see Rex on a huge screen in front of 55K people[emoji38]….as you now know, that didn’t happen :sad: But it was still really fun to make and I hope someone from the band or their crew saw it and had a laugh.

 

So it took us a couple of evenings in my living room to make all that. I then recorded my video on my own. That failed too :sad:

 

I left Paris to go to Manchester on Friday afternoon. Claire arrived at about midnight and we had a few hours of sleep at the hotel – we were so tired from our trips and week (exams for her, new internship for me after a few months of non-stop hardcore studying :dead: ). We saw on the nice little brochure that was mailed to us with our tickets, that the area around the stadium didn’t open until 6am. So we went there for 6am :cheesy:

 

That is mental, yes, indeed, but it is my only concert for this tour as of now, and I reaaaaaally wanted to be front row, so I wasn’t going to take any risk. The spot just at the beginning of the catwalk on Jonny’s side was mine, MINE >:(

 

We were scared that the weather would be terrible, but we got lucky from the moment we woke up! We had a really nice, warm day which helped for the whole queuing experience (and then the concert).

 

We had booked the hotel according to our tiny budget and as close to the stadium as possible, so we only had to walk for about 15-20 minutes, and we arrived at about 6.10am! As we arrived I started freaking out because I genuinely wasn’t ready for this :bomb:

 

Hence this picture:

CkFYvkUWgAAoo1f.jpg

 

CkFYUx9WYAAO4p1.jpg

 

We realized as we arrived that we were alone there. Nobody. Was. Queueing. Yet. First at this 55k venue now how cool is that :awesome: (ok it’s definitely rather creepy or crazy than cool haha)

 

We noticed that our gate was divided into two parts: Y1 and Y2, which was super confusing. We went for the one we thought would be slightly closer to the spot we wanted to reach…but you’ll read later that this was a mistake haHAHA

 

10 minutes later, two other fans passed by to go to their gate on the opposite side of the stadium. Eventually, around 7 I think, two guys arrived to queue at our door too. They had to study while queuing as they had exams on Monday! If you’re reading this I hope you guys passed!

 

We were at gate Y. Gate Z, right next to us, was occupied as some kind of backstage area, for which the entrance was right in front of us, so throughout the day we looked at every single person coming in and out of there, with the hope of getting to meet anyone who could pass our gifts to the band. Unfortunately we didn’t meet anyone. I also DM’d Coldplay on Twitter to increase our shot at passing the gifts to them.

 

Anyway, still early in the morning, we met some amazing people that have been our friends for a while thanks to Coldplay. I don’t think on Coldplaying but they might be lurking… We got to spend some parts of the day with these brilliant folks and that was really awesome (except for that one dude who hates French saucisson, what a jerk ;) ).

 

As the queue slowly grew, we would play cards and watch the roadies and assistants arrive.

 

It was something like 1pm when I saw something INCREDIBLE unfold, right under my eyes. I was going back to my spot at the very front of the queue, when a man (rather handsome, I must say :charming: ) who was holding a camera and had been lurking around, asked me to let him in the queue. He came over to two guys who had been there since like 8 and 11am I think. They were talking and I kept thinking I knew them from somewhere somehow but couldn’t put a name on them. Anyway, Handsome Crew Guy asked them if they were big Coldplay fans (DUH, tbh), where they were from, how they met, since when they had been queuing. He asked again if they were big Coldplay fans and then asked them if they were interested in recording an interview for the band, backstage (like WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT)…so they were like “uh wait what really yes”. Handsome Crew Guy told them it wouldn’t take too long and that they would be back in their spot soon. Then he turned to me and asked me to stay at my spot and make sure they would get their spot back. I obviously seized the opportunity to ask him if there was any chance he could get a couple of presents across to the band somehow, but he said he wouldn’t be able to. When they eventually got back, I talked to each of them for a bit…and eventually realized it was Jamie from Sheffield and Linus from Sweden! Of course I knew these guys!![emoji23]

We didn’t hear much from the soundcheck apart lots of recordings of AOAL, and like 10 seconds of Army of One. I realize now that they were performing inside for Nova Red Room which kind of explains it all[emoji38]

The queue got rather big and around 3 or 3.30pm, when the security arrived and started organizing the queue to get ready for the doors to open, I started to get really nervous. A few people who had arrived much later than us seemed to be ahead of us in the queue somehow, and there were confusing tables and I don’t know I was just really nervous you know :bomb: The opening got delayed by 15 minutes :bomb::bomb: Then the other part of gate Y opened like 20 seconds before ours :bomb::bomb: Then went through security, the scan, and started rushing towards the stairs……without any Xyloband or Love Button people J We didn’t have time to stop so we just went straight to the barrier. We got our spot!! Woohoo!!! Turns out the corner could have been even better, as the stage isn’t as high as we thought, but it was full already anyway. We looked around and saw everyone had a Xyloband (and in some cases, several of them, although they could definitely belong to friends and family with them, or come from a previous concert), but not necessarily a love button. We were upset at the prospect of not having a Xyloband for this concert so Claire did something heroic :dazzled: She decided to go upstairs and get us the goddamn wristband! So I spread a little to make sure she could get her spot back. I was SHAKING from stress and also still not believing where we were and well probably exhaustion too haha :awesome: I started apologizing to the people nearby, telling them I was waiting for my friend to come back as we waited all day, first at the venue, but somehow without getting a wristband. They were really nice and understanding, a man even said: “oh don’t worry we’ll make sure to keep her spot too!” :wacky: She arrived just after he said that, actually, and all was right again. Phew. She managed to get a wristband for each of us, but of course had to argue with the person who was handing them out, as the instructions were obviously to get one per person, and she couldn’t prove she was actually with someone else. But it was the truth okay and this post now proves it.[emoji38]

Now was the time for us to start on Plan B to get the gifts to the band somehow. The roadies were obviously too busy. We saw Miller pass by a couple of times on the other side of the catwalk, and obviously he would’ve been busy too but he could have been our chance…

 

Alessia Cara, the first support act, started performing. She was great! She seems young but super talented, I liked her voice! But something terrible -and hilarious- happened to us during her performance. As we were watching her on the main stage, we didn’t see Miller coming on our side of the catwalk. :facepalm: We saw him just as he passed by, and we only had time to yell, in shock and horror (“OH! OH! AAAAAHHHHHHH”), that he was gone K We hated ourselves at that moment[emoji38]but honestly I wish it was caught on tape, I’m still laughing at this[emoji38]

But something absolutely awesome and legendary happened right after her set :awesome:

 

Suddenly, we heard the crowd on Guy’s side get really excited. We looked their way and saw PHIL, on the main stage!!! He was with two women and an adorable kid! :cheesy: The crowd was waving at Phil and he was all happy. THIS. WAS. OUR. SHOT. So we waved the flag real high, as he looked around….AND HE SPOTTED US!!!! :awesome::cheesy::awesome: He saw the flag, had the biggest smile on his face ( :wacky: :dazzled: ), he waved and gave us a thumbs up! :awesome: Still can’t quite believe it ohmygod I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment :awesome: He then showed it to the women and the kid! And we waved some more and they smiled and waved and Phil did the thumb up again :awesome::awesome:

 

So even if we couldn’t actually give him the flag, he noticed it and was happy, and that was really the most important for us, so mission 1 accomplished!! So you see that date was incredible for us before the concert had even begun[emoji38]

…AND I JUST NOTICED COLDPLAY FAVOURITED MY TWEET ABOUT THE FLAG THAT DAY WAAAAAT boy we really didn’t see anything that day did we[emoji38]

Anyway, it took us a while to get over that moment, obviously. The nice people around us saw how excited we were and the tall bald dude next to Claire was like “yeah! Awesome! You go girls!” (Tall Bald Fan if you’re here, you were awesome but like you were too tall >:( ).

 

Lianne La Havas then came to perform and she is so talented! She also seemed truly grateful to be there, and sounded like a really nice and funny person. I didn’t know her music before but did know her by name of course.

 

And after her it was eventually time for Coldplay. I wasn’t ready and kept telling Claire I DEFINITELY was not ready and it was all coming too fast and I wasn’t ready goddamnit :bomb: Claire agreed with me and we were soooo excited.

 

Then the music (which was the same mix as the one from the Stade de France concert in Paris in 2012 :bigcry: ) stopped. And the intro began and my thoughts at that moment can only be described with a line of random letters, numbers, signs and dazzled emojis :dazzled:

 

Claire sang during the Ave Maria ([emoji38]). Then they showed the video of Coldplay fans allover the world, ending with Linus and Jamie!!! :cheesy: Then we heard the beautiful introduction with Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator. I was so emotional over it because I love it so much and it makes so much sense, it’s so relevant and I’m so happy they use it for their tour.

 

And then the concert began and I died about a dozen times over the span of two hours :cheesy: :dead: I’m mostly going to write about my highlights (although let’s face it there wasn’t any low point for me).

 

A Head Full of Dreams has been one of my favourite songs off the album since I saw the band perform at Wagram, in Paris last December. I fell in love with that song that night and June 4th was just a confirmation really. Seeing them all arrive on stage made me so happy, seeing Chris singing and hopping around and dancing made me so happy. There was this warm, almost comforting feeling somehow, like I was home and yes I was seeing my favourite band that I see on pictures every day. I got so busy with my studies the past few months, that I couldn’t follow with the tour and interviews properly. I mostly saw pictures and 30 second videos. So maybe it was just this reassuring feeling that my favourite band was still actually alive and well, and that I was where I belong (or some other cheesy stuff like that). And on the other hand, there was this overwhelming panic and excitement over being front row at a Coldplay concert again, of course[emoji38]

I think it’s their best opener (my all time favourite song still is Politik though). “I think I landed and there are miracles at work” is a rather accurate line for what you feel during the opening song of a Coldplay stadium concert[emoji38]

So as I told you we weren’t ready at all, and Claire burst into tears. I was so emotional and then noticed her crying so I ended up crying too – which doesn’t happen a lot for me.[emoji38]We were like “We did say we weren’t ready for it goddamnit!!”

 

It was just so beautiful :wacky: The fireworks, the song, the ChrisMartinSexyDancingMachine, the crowd….it was perfect.

 

We were standing right in front of the Flower of Life symbol on the catwalk, and that’s where Chris makes one of his first stops so you can imagine I did not take it very well :dead: We saw his belly several times hehehehehehehehhe :dazzled:

 

Chris Martin literally oozes sex appeal I don’t know how else to describe this hot man/machine/mess. :dead: :dazzled: Seriously though, the confidence that he has on stage is incredible and gets bigger with each tour. And to think he used to apologize on stage for simply performing, 15 years ago!

 

Claire kept showing him the flag and he noticed it quickly, although he didn’t react. I assume he doesn’t know about Harveytown (after all it’s mostly a thing on social media) or didn’t think it was worth reacting to[emoji38]But the look was enough :dazzled: God that man, how can I ever get over him :dazzled:

 

Yellow was a great moment, as it always is. I feel it’s probably something even more special in the UK, as it is their first hit ever, in their home country. It is really a special song and a particular communal moment. Chris sang some of it to his girlfriend obviously – he didn’t mention her then but when he keeps looking at a specific spot in the distance, you know someone’s here :nod::lol:

 

I have to admit that throughout the concert I kept saying “aawwww my babies aaww look at them aaawwwww” to Claire, every goddamn minute and I am grateful that she didn’t smash my face against the barrier despite that. :nod: They were just so. ADORABLE :awesome:

 

Will is so fit and majestic :dazzled: Guy is still unbearable to look at, frankly. That sexy devil. I actually caught him smiling :dazzled: Now as for Jonny, our mission to make him smile as he is the most adorable man on the planet when he does :wacky::wacky::

 

And guess what? WE DID!!!!! :awesome::awesome:

 

He noticed the t-shirt during The Scientist!!! I had been waving the shirt for a while, without really going for it. Then Claire took it from me and decided to be done with it. She properly waved it towards Jonny as the angle was perfect and the vision was clear. And the most precious thing happened :wacky::awesome: He saw it and smiled in his classic, humble and shy way, and it seemed he was genuinely grateful for it. Mission 2 accomplished! Yesssss

 

Tall Bald Fan looked at us and gave us a thumb up[emoji38]Now about Tall Bald Fan. His head obstructed our view a bit but man he was such a fan I forgive him[emoji38]We could tell he’s a drummer or just really into drums, cause he kept air-drumming for many songs[emoji38]

The Scientist still obviously makes me super emotional. It’s always such an awesome moment at their concerts….although it stole Politik’s spot and a part of me will resent this song forever for it >:([emoji38]

It wasn't even the end for our glorious moments that night. Out of nowhere, Miller surfaced and came towards us. Claire was like "MILLERR MILLER OMG", he stopped and pointed at us, as if he was looking for specific people, seemed to say "ah, that's you, right?". Claire unfolded the flag, and he took a picture of us with the flag!!!!!!!! Roadie 42 took a picture of Claire and I with the Harveytown flag :dead: He then quickly left under the stage. It gave me the feeling that he saw us on camera and was looking for us, but maybe i'm fooled.

 

They started playing Birds and I went “YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS I WANTED THAT ONE”[emoji38]Claire and I went into some kind of transe during that song. We still don’t know why exactly to be honest[emoji38]I do really love Birds, but I never imagined to be in such state when I’d witness it live[emoji38]The cameraman filming the audience obviously caught that moment, however I don’t think it made it on the screens. We did hear from a friend that Claire and I appeared on the screens a couple of times. We were on fire :nod: Even after queuing 11 hours and waiting 4 more hours inside.

 

The crowd as a whole felt pretty into it from our point of view. The atmosphere was great. Across the catwalk we also spotted a White T-shirts Gang (several dudes wearing white t-shirts) who were SOOOOO excited during the whole concert! That was great!

 

The Paradise remix is also obviously another highlight, jesuschrist it is soooooooo good!!! And for the Buckin lovers out there it is obviously what replaces the GPASUYF mating dance :nod: Chris and Jonny were doing their wild thing right in front of us and it was awesome :awesome:

 

When the band got to the b-stage (killing us in the process by being way too close to us yet too far :dead: ), they stopped and turned to the screen. Muhammad Ali appeared, and we heard some incredibly meaningful words from him. It was surreal because it was so relevant to the spirit of the show. The whole crowd cheered and it was a truly emotional moment. That was a great homage. The attitude from the band particularly stroke me, as they stood still and watched the video. They could’ve just casually waited and stuff, but no they genuinely paid their respect to the late Muhammad Ali and that was beautiful.

 

We didn't see them well on the b-stage as it is further from the main the stage than for the MX tour. But we did see their four beautiful butts :dazzled::wacky:

 

Lovers in Japan was a true surprise and I loved it, especially as the introduction leading up to it was full of suspense! When Chris said to Will “let’s try it” I got so excited, we knew we were in for a special moment! :dazzled: I thought it was great, some kind of upgraded acoustic version! I love the acoustic Lovers In Japan at least as much as the original, so this was a real treat!

 

The second part of the main stage performance had me dead. On several occasions.

 

Midnight was great. I like that they only keep a small part of it. It didn’t work that well in a small venue (I was at the Casino de Paris in 2014), and it wouldn’t work for 4 minutes in a full stadium. The lasers look awesome and it manages to bring a different atmosphere. It’s a cool moment and it’s great that they turned a potentially low point from their GS concerts into a strength.

 

Then Charlie Brown came along and it’s obviously still one of the best moments in every Coldplay concert :awesome: It’s simply crazy, the crowd goes wild, it’s so much fun :awesome: The security guy in front of us was in awe[emoji38]The xylobands are always such a beautiful sight too :wacky: I was glad Chris took the time to do the outro on piano, as I really needed to catch my breath at the end[emoji38]We hadn’t had VLV yet and I needed some energy left :nod:

 

But Chris decided to change his shirt on stage :dead: At first I was busy catching my breath and looking around, then Claire freaked out, I turned and HOLYCRAP CHRIS’ BACK CHRIS’BACK CHRIS’BACK OHMYGODDDDDDDDDD

 

:| Hm.

 

So hm the people near us (including Tall Bald Fan) laughed so hard as they saw us freak out like the biggest groupies[emoji38]:lol:

 

It’s still embedded in my brain, that moment, you know :dead:

 

Hymn For the Weekend was a pleasant surprise as well! I did know it would be there obviously, but what I mean is that it was the best performance I had heard of it! In Paris and on tv they hadn’t quit got it right I thought, but by adding drums with Guy and Jonny, it made the song sound really well live, finally! I love the album version and now I have a live version that I can really enjoy and I’m so happy with that!

 

Then Fix You happened :dead: I was first really surprised and kinda disappointed when I noticed Chris wasn’t going to play most of it on his piano. It obviously takes away a part of the live element to it. But when you see the Xylobands light up in yellow, throughout the song, with Chris completely focusing on singing….it took my breath away. It’s a visual representation of the line “Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones”, obviously, and it is an overwhelming sight. It was insanely beautiful and emotional. He then got back to the piano for the end of the song.

 

Their cover of Heroes is a Buckin highlight of course :dazzled: Chris singing to Jonny :dazzled: Chris also plays the guitar in a particularly sexy manner during that song, I have to add :nod: The whole stadium was standing for this, great moment.

 

Viva la Vida is still a classic and I’m glad I had the time to breathe this time, because the CB+VLV combination was AWESOME but really too much to handle for me during my MX concert :dead:

 

As for the C-stage, well as you know Trouble was chosen. I had requested Ghost Story and Claire Strawberry Swing. We were obviously a bit disappointed but that version of Trouble was great!!! Also I hadn’t heard it live myself before so that was still awesome. I eventually realized that the security guy in front of us was actually singing along to it, and quite loudly![emoji38]Now that was brilliant, guards usually seem so unphased.

 

Then he started thanking Debs and we realized we were getting a super old song. I had seen her tweet on twitter that she loved Sparks. The fan across the catwalk and I had the exact same reaction of shock at the exact same time actally[emoji38]We like: :OOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Then he announced See You Soon. Lol. I actually prefer See You Soon to Sparks so I was really happy to have it on the setlit for that night. Especially as it is an old time favourite for me. Back when I started to listen to Coldplay every day, in 2011-2012, discovering all their songs, I fell in love with See You Soon, by immediately identifying with it. I love this song so much, it means a lot to me, and I feel lucky to have heard it live. Especially as Chris added a bit of Oasis at the end in the most adorable and beautiful voice :dazzled:

 

Will and Guy were the first back on the main stage. Chris and Jonny joined them later, and they started playing Amazing Day. Amazing Buckin happened on the b-stage and catwalk as Chris took Jonny for a spin, said “Come on Jonny I know you love it” and Jonny smiled :dazzled::dazzled: I love when Jonny smiles and when Chris is happy like that :wacky: The visuals on the main screen were also awesome by the way! Absolutely stunning!

 

A sky full of stars was pretty damn awesome. The confetti got all over us and were lost in this mess, and so was Chris :dazzled: He was right next to us but we could barely see him. And suddenly, right in front of us, we see this guy coming out of nowhere towards Chris. You heard Chris played it cool, and indeed he danced with him. But the look on his face wasn’t happy and playful at all. You could tell he wasn’t cool with it at all, which is normal cause this stranger could have been real dangerous. So he danced with him for two seconds, then let him go/made him go away in a perfect gesture, like “okay buy now I don’t actually like you get out”[emoji38]It kinda ruined the moment for me, we were so into the song and that jerk disrupted the whole thing. Thankfully Chris is the best at handling this kind of things, but this is the second time this tour and I hope it doesn’t happen again. The venues need to up their security. Stop focusing on our cute little flags barely obstructing the barrier and focus more on crazy people :angry:

 

And then it was the end. Already :'( :'( :'( Up&Up is such a beautiful ending. I wish more people would sing along to it, or that there was a way we could hear the crowd more than the recorded choir. But anyway I loved it so much. Up & Up is their most important song since Politik and it is so relevant.

 

As they were waving a crowd, we showed the t-shirt to Jonny again and he saw it again and smiled :dazzled: My baby :dazzled:

 

And then they were gone. My babies L

 

We went to see our friends again and exchanged stories. We bought the tour book :awesome: We walked for ages to the city center to get some food, then go back to the hotel. On our way, at a cross road, some dudes yelled at us from their car: “COLDPLAAAAYYYYYY MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!” Hell yeah :awesome: We also heard some Coldplay albums being played in several cars. Hehe :charming:

 

But my story doesn’t end here. Lmao sorry guys this isn’t over yet I still have some crazy stuff to tell you about :awesome:

 

The next day, on the Sunday, we went to the city center for a walk. We first tried to go to the Cuba Café, as a Coldplay landmark of sorts, but it was closed when we got there. We then went to the hotel where they supposedly stayed. We weren’t really comfortable with that as it’s not something common for Coldplay fans to do in the UK, so we weren’t going to stay there long. It was just a bonus in case they happened to be there somehow at the same time as us, to finally hand them the presents. They definitely weren’t there, but quite a few people were waiting. It looked curious, as none of them showed signs of being Coldplay fans. We were sitting a bit far from the entrance door, when a crowd rushed towards a man who had just got out of there. We didn’t recognize him, but we rushed to see him, just in case. Turns out it was Jack Whitehall!!!! :lol::lol::lol: Few minutes later, a man that we still haven’t identified was also very popular, we saw a guy rushing to him with a football shoe so we assumed he was a famous, former footballer :nod: Then we saw a girl with a One Direction t-shirt, and I remembered that a friend texted me after the concert to tell me Niall Horan was there. It all made sense now[emoji38]

We left shortly after that to enjoy a stroll in a particularly warm and sunny Manchester :dazzled: We kept seeing confetti and people wearing love buttons or Coldplay merch :awesome::dazzled: We stopped at Vinyl Exchange, as I was looking for specific vinyls for my sister. I didn’t find any of them, but I did find the Talk CD/DVD thing for £2! :cheesy:

 

We finally had to leave to the airport. Even at the airport, we saw some Coldplay fans[emoji38]

And it doesn’t even end here[emoji38]Claire and I weren’t on the same plane, and I ended up sitting near a particular handsome guy :dazzled: We talked a little and guess what? Hot Plane Guy saw Coldplay when they were supporting Muse at a small venue in London back in the days :o :dead: What are the chances[emoji38]He didn’t look old so I assume he was a teenager when he saw them. I love how Coldplay is so huge, everyone seems to have their little story with them or their music.

 

AND THAT’S IT.

 

This weekend was wild and this concert was my best Coldplay concert yet. One of my biggest dreams was to see them front row at a small venue and that happened in December. It meant so much to me at that time, right after the attacks. And somehow this concert in Manchester was just as great, in a completely different way. I think that as it was the fourth time, I got to actually enjoy the experience a bit more instead of being shocked and completely overwhelmed the whole time. Also, AHFOD means the world to me. I can never pick a favourite album, but this one has been with me through my most challenging year so far. It was a therapeutic album after the attacks (I was lucky not to have been hurt by it in any way, but, you know, as I live in Paris it still hit pretty hard), and on an unrelated subject it made me want to fall in love again, AND, on top of everything, it was with me throughout my final school project, the biggest I’ve ever done. I spent a few all nighters on it, and the only album on my phone was AHFOD, so I spent nights listening to it like 6 times in a row to keep me awake, without ever getting sick of it. Army Of One has become one of my favourite anthems, Up&Up is one their most important songs, and this album just really makes sense to me.

 

I love Coldplay so much and I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened to me ever since I got into them. To the next time, my precious :dazzled:

 

Sorry for this comically huge wall of text by the way

 

 

I'll add some pics tomorrow but I have to sleep now :lol:

Thanks for sharing your whole journey, it took me back to the amazing days I had in the Mexican shows

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Great writeup, loved it :D happy u managed to get to your spot even tho the other gate opened first, and that u got ur hands on the wristbands in the end. We had to do the same thing with going back for it... Idk what was up with our entrance cause everyone else had one :o
Damn! I guess the Xylobands people arrived like 5 seconds after we went through the doors?!

Oh and i wish i would've talked to u guys earlier tbh, but i'm a bit shit at talking to new people like that, so maybe next time (if that ever happens) :)
I feel the same, i felt silly for not talking to you earlier :lol:
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Well personally i don't like what he did... If him managin to get on stage that easily and Chris being cool about it inspires more people to do it, then who know's what'll happen...

Wise words, Linus. My feelings exactly.

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My, oh, my ! As usual with a Coldplay concert, this was a pretty wild adventure !!!

 

I’m now lucky to have seen them four times, and I wish I could see them a thousand times more.

 

I just wanted to share with you my story, actually my friend Claire’s and my story, cause we went through this together and ohmygod the awesomeness of it all you guys won’t believe it :awesome:

 

 

 

 

Ok so I’m gonna skip all the difficulties we had first to actually get to that concert – but there…were a lot, between the huge fail when I bought my ticket, the stress of getting the same gate, the expensive changes in Claire’s travel plan…Man getting to that concert was a challenge!

 

Anyway, I need to tell you about the week leading up to the concert. Claire and I had had the idea of making a flag somehow. We thought it would be cool to make some presents for the band, really, and as Chris raises a flag at every concert for ETIAW, we thought this was a good idea. But of course not any flag :sneaky:

 

We decided to go for a flag that would represent the whole Coldplay fandom, as we’re not Brits so, like, a UK flag wasn’t really relevant to us. We went for a Harveytown flag, because as Chris always says, Phil is kind of their boss after all :wacky: Also, we couldn’t remember of any story about a Harveytown flag before so we figured it was perhaps a first, and that was even cooler!

 

We didn’t have much budget or time for this so we went full DIY: I took one of my sheets, we bought one of these transfer paper things, and tadaaaaaa…..

 

CkHx8BhWUAUGMA4.jpg

 

:cheesy:

 

But we weren’t stopping there. :sneaky: More and more fans have noticed that Jonny doesn’t look all that happy on stage these days since the UK tour started. So did we, and we thought we could make a fun little gift just to show some love and support….and we came up with that!!

 

qZ7b7AZG.jpg

 

It’s a t-shirt :cheesy: (with JONNY B printed on the back :awesome: )

 

We also made a cap to replace that the infamous smiley cap (that damn chilling evil smile :angry: ) but it was kind of a fail lol :awesome:

 

Finally, we recorded Claire’s request. She wasn’t sure she wanted to show her face to dozens of thousands of strangers, so we also had an amazing idea for that, you can still check it out on Instagram here:

 

[MEDIA=instagram]BGH7nazh_VG[/MEDIA]

 

This is Rex, Claire’s stuffed dinosaur :wacky: She’s been taking him everywhere with her when she travels, and made him a mascot for ColdplayCorner. We thought it would be hilarious to see Rex on a huge screen in front of 55K people[emoji38]….as you now know, that didn’t happen :sad: But it was still really fun to make and I hope someone from the band or their crew saw it and had a laugh.

 

So it took us a couple of evenings in my living room to make all that. I then recorded my video on my own. That failed too :sad:

 

I left Paris to go to Manchester on Friday afternoon. Claire arrived at about midnight and we had a few hours of sleep at the hotel – we were so tired from our trips and week (exams for her, new internship for me after a few months of non-stop hardcore studying :dead: ). We saw on the nice little brochure that was mailed to us with our tickets, that the area around the stadium didn’t open until 6am. So we went there for 6am :cheesy:

 

That is mental, yes, indeed, but it is my only concert for this tour as of now, and I reaaaaaally wanted to be front row, so I wasn’t going to take any risk. The spot just at the beginning of the catwalk on Jonny’s side was mine, MINE >:(

 

We were scared that the weather would be terrible, but we got lucky from the moment we woke up! We had a really nice, warm day which helped for the whole queuing experience (and then the concert).

 

We had booked the hotel according to our tiny budget and as close to the stadium as possible, so we only had to walk for about 15-20 minutes, and we arrived at about 6.10am! As we arrived I started freaking out because I genuinely wasn’t ready for this :bomb:

 

Hence this picture:

CkFYvkUWgAAoo1f.jpg

 

CkFYUx9WYAAO4p1.jpg

 

We realized as we arrived that we were alone there. Nobody. Was. Queueing. Yet. First at this 55k venue now how cool is that :awesome: (ok it’s definitely rather creepy or crazy than cool haha)

 

We noticed that our gate was divided into two parts: Y1 and Y2, which was super confusing. We went for the one we thought would be slightly closer to the spot we wanted to reach…but you’ll read later that this was a mistake haHAHA

 

10 minutes later, two other fans passed by to go to their gate on the opposite side of the stadium. Eventually, around 7 I think, two guys arrived to queue at our door too. They had to study while queuing as they had exams on Monday! If you’re reading this I hope you guys passed!

 

We were at gate Y. Gate Z, right next to us, was occupied as some kind of backstage area, for which the entrance was right in front of us, so throughout the day we looked at every single person coming in and out of there, with the hope of getting to meet anyone who could pass our gifts to the band. Unfortunately we didn’t meet anyone. I also DM’d Coldplay on Twitter to increase our shot at passing the gifts to them.

 

Anyway, still early in the morning, we met some amazing people that have been our friends for a while thanks to Coldplay. I don’t think on Coldplaying but they might be lurking… We got to spend some parts of the day with these brilliant folks and that was really awesome (except for that one dude who hates French saucisson, what a jerk ;) ).

 

As the queue slowly grew, we would play cards and watch the roadies and assistants arrive.

 

It was something like 1pm when I saw something INCREDIBLE unfold, right under my eyes. I was going back to my spot at the very front of the queue, when a man (rather handsome, I must say :charming: ) who was holding a camera and had been lurking around, asked me to let him in the queue. He came over to two guys who had been there since like 8 and 11am I think. They were talking and I kept thinking I knew them from somewhere somehow but couldn’t put a name on them. Anyway, Handsome Crew Guy asked them if they were big Coldplay fans (DUH, tbh), where they were from, how they met, since when they had been queuing. He asked again if they were big Coldplay fans and then asked them if they were interested in recording an interview for the band, backstage (like WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT)…so they were like “uh wait what really yes”. Handsome Crew Guy told them it wouldn’t take too long and that they would be back in their spot soon. Then he turned to me and asked me to stay at my spot and make sure they would get their spot back. I obviously seized the opportunity to ask him if there was any chance he could get a couple of presents across to the band somehow, but he said he wouldn’t be able to. When they eventually got back, I talked to each of them for a bit…and eventually realized it was Jamie from Sheffield and Linus from Sweden! Of course I knew these guys!![emoji23]

We didn’t hear much from the soundcheck apart lots of recordings of AOAL, and like 10 seconds of Army of One. I realize now that they were performing inside for Nova Red Room which kind of explains it all[emoji38]

The queue got rather big and around 3 or 3.30pm, when the security arrived and started organizing the queue to get ready for the doors to open, I started to get really nervous. A few people who had arrived much later than us seemed to be ahead of us in the queue somehow, and there were confusing tables and I don’t know I was just really nervous you know :bomb: The opening got delayed by 15 minutes :bomb::bomb: Then the other part of gate Y opened like 20 seconds before ours :bomb::bomb: Then went through security, the scan, and started rushing towards the stairs……without any Xyloband or Love Button people J We didn’t have time to stop so we just went straight to the barrier. We got our spot!! Woohoo!!! Turns out the corner could have been even better, as the stage isn’t as high as we thought, but it was full already anyway. We looked around and saw everyone had a Xyloband (and in some cases, several of them, although they could definitely belong to friends and family with them, or come from a previous concert), but not necessarily a love button. We were upset at the prospect of not having a Xyloband for this concert so Claire did something heroic :dazzled: She decided to go upstairs and get us the goddamn wristband! So I spread a little to make sure she could get her spot back. I was SHAKING from stress and also still not believing where we were and well probably exhaustion too haha :awesome: I started apologizing to the people nearby, telling them I was waiting for my friend to come back as we waited all day, first at the venue, but somehow without getting a wristband. They were really nice and understanding, a man even said: “oh don’t worry we’ll make sure to keep her spot too!” :wacky: She arrived just after he said that, actually, and all was right again. Phew. She managed to get a wristband for each of us, but of course had to argue with the person who was handing them out, as the instructions were obviously to get one per person, and she couldn’t prove she was actually with someone else. But it was the truth okay and this post now proves it.[emoji38]

Now was the time for us to start on Plan B to get the gifts to the band somehow. The roadies were obviously too busy. We saw Miller pass by a couple of times on the other side of the catwalk, and obviously he would’ve been busy too but he could have been our chance…

 

Alessia Cara, the first support act, started performing. She was great! She seems young but super talented, I liked her voice! But something terrible -and hilarious- happened to us during her performance. As we were watching her on the main stage, we didn’t see Miller coming on our side of the catwalk. :facepalm: We saw him just as he passed by, and we only had time to yell, in shock and horror (“OH! OH! AAAAAHHHHHHH”), that he was gone K We hated ourselves at that moment[emoji38]but honestly I wish it was caught on tape, I’m still laughing at this[emoji38]

But something absolutely awesome and legendary happened right after her set :awesome:

 

Suddenly, we heard the crowd on Guy’s side get really excited. We looked their way and saw PHIL, on the main stage!!! He was with two women and an adorable kid! :cheesy: The crowd was waving at Phil and he was all happy. THIS. WAS. OUR. SHOT. So we waved the flag real high, as he looked around….AND HE SPOTTED US!!!! :awesome::cheesy::awesome: He saw the flag, had the biggest smile on his face ( :wacky: :dazzled: ), he waved and gave us a thumbs up! :awesome: Still can’t quite believe it ohmygod I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment :awesome: He then showed it to the women and the kid! And we waved some more and they smiled and waved and Phil did the thumb up again :awesome::awesome:

 

So even if we couldn’t actually give him the flag, he noticed it and was happy, and that was really the most important for us, so mission 1 accomplished!! So you see that date was incredible for us before the concert had even begun[emoji38]

…AND I JUST NOTICED COLDPLAY FAVOURITED MY TWEET ABOUT THE FLAG THAT DAY WAAAAAT boy we really didn’t see anything that day did we[emoji38]

Anyway, it took us a while to get over that moment, obviously. The nice people around us saw how excited we were and the tall bald dude next to Claire was like “yeah! Awesome! You go girls!” (Tall Bald Fan if you’re here, you were awesome but like you were too tall >:( ).

 

Lianne La Havas then came to perform and she is so talented! She also seemed truly grateful to be there, and sounded like a really nice and funny person. I didn’t know her music before but did know her by name of course.

 

And after her it was eventually time for Coldplay. I wasn’t ready and kept telling Claire I DEFINITELY was not ready and it was all coming too fast and I wasn’t ready goddamnit :bomb: Claire agreed with me and we were soooo excited.

 

Then the music (which was the same mix as the one from the Stade de France concert in Paris in 2012 :bigcry: ) stopped. And the intro began and my thoughts at that moment can only be described with a line of random letters, numbers, signs and dazzled emojis :dazzled:

 

Claire sang during the Ave Maria ([emoji38]). Then they showed the video of Coldplay fans allover the world, ending with Linus and Jamie!!! :cheesy: Then we heard the beautiful introduction with Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator. I was so emotional over it because I love it so much and it makes so much sense, it’s so relevant and I’m so happy they use it for their tour.

 

And then the concert began and I died about a dozen times over the span of two hours :cheesy: :dead: I’m mostly going to write about my highlights (although let’s face it there wasn’t any low point for me).

 

A Head Full of Dreams has been one of my favourite songs off the album since I saw the band perform at Wagram, in Paris last December. I fell in love with that song that night and June 4th was just a confirmation really. Seeing them all arrive on stage made me so happy, seeing Chris singing and hopping around and dancing made me so happy. There was this warm, almost comforting feeling somehow, like I was home and yes I was seeing my favourite band that I see on pictures every day. I got so busy with my studies the past few months, that I couldn’t follow with the tour and interviews properly. I mostly saw pictures and 30 second videos. So maybe it was just this reassuring feeling that my favourite band was still actually alive and well, and that I was where I belong (or some other cheesy stuff like that). And on the other hand, there was this overwhelming panic and excitement over being front row at a Coldplay concert again, of course[emoji38]

I think it’s their best opener (my all time favourite song still is Politik though). “I think I landed and there are miracles at work” is a rather accurate line for what you feel during the opening song of a Coldplay stadium concert[emoji38]

So as I told you we weren’t ready at all, and Claire burst into tears. I was so emotional and then noticed her crying so I ended up crying too – which doesn’t happen a lot for me.[emoji38]We were like “We did say we weren’t ready for it goddamnit!!”

 

It was just so beautiful :wacky: The fireworks, the song, the ChrisMartinSexyDancingMachine, the crowd….it was perfect.

 

We were standing right in front of the Flower of Life symbol on the catwalk, and that’s where Chris makes one of his first stops so you can imagine I did not take it very well :dead: We saw his belly several times hehehehehehehehhe :dazzled:

 

Chris Martin literally oozes sex appeal I don’t know how else to describe this hot man/machine/mess. :dead: :dazzled: Seriously though, the confidence that he has on stage is incredible and gets bigger with each tour. And to think he used to apologize on stage for simply performing, 15 years ago!

 

Claire kept showing him the flag and he noticed it quickly, although he didn’t react. I assume he doesn’t know about Harveytown (after all it’s mostly a thing on social media) or didn’t think it was worth reacting to[emoji38]But the look was enough :dazzled: God that man, how can I ever get over him :dazzled:

 

Yellow was a great moment, as it always is. I feel it’s probably something even more special in the UK, as it is their first hit ever, in their home country. It is really a special song and a particular communal moment. Chris sang some of it to his girlfriend obviously – he didn’t mention her then but when he keeps looking at a specific spot in the distance, you know someone’s here :nod::lol:

 

I have to admit that throughout the concert I kept saying “aawwww my babies aaww look at them aaawwwww” to Claire, every goddamn minute and I am grateful that she didn’t smash my face against the barrier despite that. :nod: They were just so. ADORABLE :awesome:

 

Will is so fit and majestic :dazzled: Guy is still unbearable to look at, frankly. That sexy devil. I actually caught him smiling :dazzled: Now as for Jonny, our mission to make him smile as he is the most adorable man on the planet when he does :wacky::wacky::

 

And guess what? WE DID!!!!! :awesome::awesome:

 

He noticed the t-shirt during The Scientist!!! I had been waving the shirt for a while, without really going for it. Then Claire took it from me and decided to be done with it. She properly waved it towards Jonny as the angle was perfect and the vision was clear. And the most precious thing happened :wacky::awesome: He saw it and smiled in his classic, humble and shy way, and it seemed he was genuinely grateful for it. Mission 2 accomplished! Yesssss

 

Tall Bald Fan looked at us and gave us a thumb up[emoji38]Now about Tall Bald Fan. His head obstructed our view a bit but man he was such a fan I forgive him[emoji38]We could tell he’s a drummer or just really into drums, cause he kept air-drumming for many songs[emoji38]

The Scientist still obviously makes me super emotional. It’s always such an awesome moment at their concerts….although it stole Politik’s spot and a part of me will resent this song forever for it >:([emoji38]

It wasn't even the end for our glorious moments that night. Out of nowhere, Miller surfaced and came towards us. Claire was like "MILLERR MILLER OMG", he stopped and pointed at us, as if he was looking for specific people, seemed to say "ah, that's you, right?". Claire unfolded the flag, and he took a picture of us with the flag!!!!!!!! Roadie 42 took a picture of Claire and I with the Harveytown flag :dead: He then quickly left under the stage. It gave me the feeling that he saw us on camera and was looking for us, but maybe i'm fooled.

 

They started playing Birds and I went “YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS I WANTED THAT ONE”[emoji38]Claire and I went into some kind of transe during that song. We still don’t know why exactly to be honest[emoji38]I do really love Birds, but I never imagined to be in such state when I’d witness it live[emoji38]The cameraman filming the audience obviously caught that moment, however I don’t think it made it on the screens. We did hear from a friend that Claire and I appeared on the screens a couple of times. We were on fire :nod: Even after queuing 11 hours and waiting 4 more hours inside.

 

The crowd as a whole felt pretty into it from our point of view. The atmosphere was great. Across the catwalk we also spotted a White T-shirts Gang (several dudes wearing white t-shirts) who were SOOOOO excited during the whole concert! That was great!

 

The Paradise remix is also obviously another highlight, jesuschrist it is soooooooo good!!! And for the Buckin lovers out there it is obviously what replaces the GPASUYF mating dance :nod: Chris and Jonny were doing their wild thing right in front of us and it was awesome :awesome:

 

When the band got to the b-stage (killing us in the process by being way too close to us yet too far :dead: ), they stopped and turned to the screen. Muhammad Ali appeared, and we heard some incredibly meaningful words from him. It was surreal because it was so relevant to the spirit of the show. The whole crowd cheered and it was a truly emotional moment. That was a great homage. The attitude from the band particularly stroke me, as they stood still and watched the video. They could’ve just casually waited and stuff, but no they genuinely paid their respect to the late Muhammad Ali and that was beautiful.

 

We didn't see them well on the b-stage as it is further from the main the stage than for the MX tour. But we did see their four beautiful butts :dazzled::wacky:

 

Lovers in Japan was a true surprise and I loved it, especially as the introduction leading up to it was full of suspense! When Chris said to Will “let’s try it” I got so excited, we knew we were in for a special moment! :dazzled: I thought it was great, some kind of upgraded acoustic version! I love the acoustic Lovers In Japan at least as much as the original, so this was a real treat!

 

The second part of the main stage performance had me dead. On several occasions.

 

Midnight was great. I like that they only keep a small part of it. It didn’t work that well in a small venue (I was at the Casino de Paris in 2014), and it wouldn’t work for 4 minutes in a full stadium. The lasers look awesome and it manages to bring a different atmosphere. It’s a cool moment and it’s great that they turned a potentially low point from their GS concerts into a strength.

 

Then Charlie Brown came along and it’s obviously still one of the best moments in every Coldplay concert :awesome: It’s simply crazy, the crowd goes wild, it’s so much fun :awesome: The security guy in front of us was in awe[emoji38]The xylobands are always such a beautiful sight too :wacky: I was glad Chris took the time to do the outro on piano, as I really needed to catch my breath at the end[emoji38]We hadn’t had VLV yet and I needed some energy left :nod:

 

But Chris decided to change his shirt on stage :dead: At first I was busy catching my breath and looking around, then Claire freaked out, I turned and HOLYCRAP CHRIS’ BACK CHRIS’BACK CHRIS’BACK OHMYGODDDDDDDDDD

 

:| Hm.

 

So hm the people near us (including Tall Bald Fan) laughed so hard as they saw us freak out like the biggest groupies[emoji38]:lol:

 

It’s still embedded in my brain, that moment, you know :dead:

 

Hymn For the Weekend was a pleasant surprise as well! I did know it would be there obviously, but what I mean is that it was the best performance I had heard of it! In Paris and on tv they hadn’t quit got it right I thought, but by adding drums with Guy and Jonny, it made the song sound really well live, finally! I love the album version and now I have a live version that I can really enjoy and I’m so happy with that!

 

Then Fix You happened :dead: I was first really surprised and kinda disappointed when I noticed Chris wasn’t going to play most of it on his piano. It obviously takes away a part of the live element to it. But when you see the Xylobands light up in yellow, throughout the song, with Chris completely focusing on singing….it took my breath away. It’s a visual representation of the line “Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones”, obviously, and it is an overwhelming sight. It was insanely beautiful and emotional. He then got back to the piano for the end of the song.

 

Their cover of Heroes is a Buckin highlight of course :dazzled: Chris singing to Jonny :dazzled: Chris also plays the guitar in a particularly sexy manner during that song, I have to add :nod: The whole stadium was standing for this, great moment.

 

Viva la Vida is still a classic and I’m glad I had the time to breathe this time, because the CB+VLV combination was AWESOME but really too much to handle for me during my MX concert :dead:

 

As for the C-stage, well as you know Trouble was chosen. I had requested Ghost Story and Claire Strawberry Swing. We were obviously a bit disappointed but that version of Trouble was great!!! Also I hadn’t heard it live myself before so that was still awesome. I eventually realized that the security guy in front of us was actually singing along to it, and quite loudly![emoji38]Now that was brilliant, guards usually seem so unphased.

 

Then he started thanking Debs and we realized we were getting a super old song. I had seen her tweet on twitter that she loved Sparks. The fan across the catwalk and I had the exact same reaction of shock at the exact same time actally[emoji38]We like: :OOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Then he announced See You Soon. Lol. I actually prefer See You Soon to Sparks so I was really happy to have it on the setlit for that night. Especially as it is an old time favourite for me. Back when I started to listen to Coldplay every day, in 2011-2012, discovering all their songs, I fell in love with See You Soon, by immediately identifying with it. I love this song so much, it means a lot to me, and I feel lucky to have heard it live. Especially as Chris added a bit of Oasis at the end in the most adorable and beautiful voice :dazzled:

 

Will and Guy were the first back on the main stage. Chris and Jonny joined them later, and they started playing Amazing Day. Amazing Buckin happened on the b-stage and catwalk as Chris took Jonny for a spin, said “Come on Jonny I know you love it” and Jonny smiled :dazzled::dazzled: I love when Jonny smiles and when Chris is happy like that :wacky: The visuals on the main screen were also awesome by the way! Absolutely stunning!

 

A sky full of stars was pretty damn awesome. The confetti got all over us and were lost in this mess, and so was Chris :dazzled: He was right next to us but we could barely see him. And suddenly, right in front of us, we see this guy coming out of nowhere towards Chris. You heard Chris played it cool, and indeed he danced with him. But the look on his face wasn’t happy and playful at all. You could tell he wasn’t cool with it at all, which is normal cause this stranger could have been real dangerous. So he danced with him for two seconds, then let him go/made him go away in a perfect gesture, like “okay buy now I don’t actually like you get out”[emoji38]It kinda ruined the moment for me, we were so into the song and that jerk disrupted the whole thing. Thankfully Chris is the best at handling this kind of things, but this is the second time this tour and I hope it doesn’t happen again. The venues need to up their security. Stop focusing on our cute little flags barely obstructing the barrier and focus more on crazy people :angry:

 

And then it was the end. Already :'( :'( :'( Up&Up is such a beautiful ending. I wish more people would sing along to it, or that there was a way we could hear the crowd more than the recorded choir. But anyway I loved it so much. Up & Up is their most important song since Politik and it is so relevant.

 

As they were waving a crowd, we showed the t-shirt to Jonny again and he saw it again and smiled :dazzled: My baby :dazzled:

 

And then they were gone. My babies L

 

We went to see our friends again and exchanged stories. We bought the tour book :awesome: We walked for ages to the city center to get some food, then go back to the hotel. On our way, at a cross road, some dudes yelled at us from their car: “COLDPLAAAAYYYYYY MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!!” Hell yeah :awesome: We also heard some Coldplay albums being played in several cars. Hehe :charming:

 

But my story doesn’t end here. Lmao sorry guys this isn’t over yet I still have some crazy stuff to tell you about :awesome:

 

The next day, on the Sunday, we went to the city center for a walk. We first tried to go to the Cuba Café, as a Coldplay landmark of sorts, but it was closed when we got there. We then went to the hotel where they supposedly stayed. We weren’t really comfortable with that as it’s not something common for Coldplay fans to do in the UK, so we weren’t going to stay there long. It was just a bonus in case they happened to be there somehow at the same time as us, to finally hand them the presents. They definitely weren’t there, but quite a few people were waiting. It looked curious, as none of them showed signs of being Coldplay fans. We were sitting a bit far from the entrance door, when a crowd rushed towards a man who had just got out of there. We didn’t recognize him, but we rushed to see him, just in case. Turns out it was Jack Whitehall!!!! :lol::lol::lol: Few minutes later, a man that we still haven’t identified was also very popular, we saw a guy rushing to him with a football shoe so we assumed he was a famous, former footballer :nod: Then we saw a girl with a One Direction t-shirt, and I remembered that a friend texted me after the concert to tell me Niall Horan was there. It all made sense now[emoji38]

We left shortly after that to enjoy a stroll in a particularly warm and sunny Manchester :dazzled: We kept seeing confetti and people wearing love buttons or Coldplay merch :awesome::dazzled: We stopped at Vinyl Exchange, as I was looking for specific vinyls for my sister. I didn’t find any of them, but I did find the Talk CD/DVD thing for £2! :cheesy:

 

We finally had to leave to the airport. Even at the airport, we saw some Coldplay fans[emoji38]

And it doesn’t even end here[emoji38]Claire and I weren’t on the same plane, and I ended up sitting near a particular handsome guy :dazzled: We talked a little and guess what? Hot Plane Guy saw Coldplay when they were supporting Muse at a small venue in London back in the days :o :dead: What are the chances[emoji38]He didn’t look old so I assume he was a teenager when he saw them. I love how Coldplay is so huge, everyone seems to have their little story with them or their music.

 

AND THAT’S IT.

 

This weekend was wild and this concert was my best Coldplay concert yet. One of my biggest dreams was to see them front row at a small venue and that happened in December. It meant so much to me at that time, right after the attacks. And somehow this concert in Manchester was just as great, in a completely different way. I think that as it was the fourth time, I got to actually enjoy the experience a bit more instead of being shocked and completely overwhelmed the whole time. Also, AHFOD means the world to me. I can never pick a favourite album, but this one has been with me through my most challenging year so far. It was a therapeutic album after the attacks (I was lucky not to have been hurt by it in any way, but, you know, as I live in Paris it still hit pretty hard), and on an unrelated subject it made me want to fall in love again, AND, on top of everything, it was with me throughout my final school project, the biggest I’ve ever done. I spent a few all nighters on it, and the only album on my phone was AHFOD, so I spent nights listening to it like 6 times in a row to keep me awake, without ever getting sick of it. Army Of One has become one of my favourite anthems, Up&Up is one their most important songs, and this album just really makes sense to me.

 

I love Coldplay so much and I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened to me ever since I got into them. To the next time, my precious :dazzled:

 

Sorry for this comically huge wall of text by the way

 

 

I'll add some pics tomorrow but I have to sleep now :lol:

Thanks for sharing your awesome story! I hope one day I can be that early in the queue and get a front row spot as well[emoji16]

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