Coldplay are named Music Week's Artist Of The Year for 2016

[stephen]

Coldplay have been named Music Week’s Artist Of The Year for 2016.

 

Over the past 12 months, the band have won a BRIT Award, played to a combined audience of over 11.5 million at the Super Bowl and headlined Glastonbury for a record fourth time. Their tour in support of A Head Full Of Dreams, released in December 2015, grossed £108.4m from 29 shows in the first half of 2016.

 

Coldplay recently became the biggest band in the world on all-time streams when they passed five billion streams on Spotify. A Head Full Of Dreams has sold 976,205 copies to date, and is on course to become the group’s sixth million-selling record.

 

Speaking exclusively to Music Week, singer Chris Martin said: “We’re extremely grateful and very honoured and want to say thank you. I just feel very grateful. Really, the people I feel most happy for are Dave [Holmes} and Phil [Harvey], our managers, and Craig [Finley, production manager], because they slave away and I feel like something like this is a good thing for them to get so that we can all remind them how special they are.”

 

Drummer Will Champion added: “We’re enjoying being in the band together so much still, which is wonderful. It’s probably our greatest achievement that we’re still happy and friends and beyond that we’ll see what happens.

 

Harvey said: “We’re absolutely delighted, it’s amazing. It really does mean a lot actually. I remember when I was a college student coming down to London and popping into a newsagent when I was about 20. I bought myself a copy of Music Week to try and convince myself that I was part of the music industry and that we were going to make it, so it’s really amazing to get this award now.”

 

Parlophone chairman Miles Leonard said: “We’re very pleased you’ve chosen them, it’s great Music Week is giving them the support. It’s been a stellar year for Coldplay in many ways. They still continue to deliver contemporary pop records and they’re always looking to push themselves into areas that give them more colour and relevance. That they can still deliver an album with four or five big singles on is quite incredible.”

 

Read the full interviews on our blog

[coldplayisawesome]

yay for Coldplay and their massive team :wacky:

[alisbe]

I'm so happy for the band. It was a long read because 2016 was a great year for Coldplay. They achieved so many things and reading the journey took me back to all those days when I tuned in a foreign radio station to hear a livestream or when I turn up the TV to watch a game a hardly understand or when I watched a livestream in a different language I don't speak. Coldplay gave us a great year :)

[cp3176]

This is epic to hear. Such a good read. Go Coldplay go!

[NickyJ]

From a fan from the beginning, huge congratulations to Coldplay, so very well deserved! Looking forward to Toronto in 2017.

[Osaka Sun]

woohoo! its been such an amazing year for coldplay! :blush:

[artist]

Very nice!!!!!! Congratulated dear Coldplay

[I ran away]

Looks like a good long read ! Is there any way to get your hands on a print copy of this newspaper/magazine outside the UK, though ?

[Nie]

Nice article!

[Revolverwin]

Congratulation to Coldplay! Looking forward to 2017