AskMen.com feature o­n Coldplay that includes pics, pictures, biography, video, related news, vital stats, commentary, and cool facts.

In a music industry overrun with senseless, jarring noise or vacuous glitter pop, it’s refreshing to have a band with a knack for rich melodies and great lyrics. Our need for a British rock band whose members are actually cool was long overdue.

Their first album, Parachutes, was an immediate hit, selling over five million copies worldwide, and their second offering was an even bigger success. With a devout following in every continent, a basketful of awards, and songs so great that each o­ne merits airplay, these guys just might be the biggest Brit band since the Beatles.

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It's one of the great soap opera plot staples - you need someone's guilty little secret exposed, you set them up to have a small accident somewhere they shouldn't be. And so it is with Chris Martin - soft, caring, socially aware Chris Martin.

Recently, he pranged the back of a woman's car in London. Now, it's not so much that he shouldn't have been in London, but that someone who really worries about the planet and people on it shouldn't have been sitting behind the wheel of a SUV. Perhaps Chris is unaware that these vehicles - besides being inappropriate for a crowded city street - throw out enormous amounts of greenhouse gases.

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Mike Bell (Calgary Sun) has provided us all with some festive cheer - by writing a few seasonal wishes to his 'favourite' pop stars. Here are just a couple:

To Chris Martin from Coldplay: I wish you would cheer the hell up. Dude, you're making babies with Gwyneth Paltrow -- you should be high-fiving every man, woman and child you meet and writing songs so syrupy and upbeat they'd make a Care Bear puke.

To Green Day: God help me, but I wish a Jeb Bush presidency in 2008. If American Idiot is what you come up with under George W.'s reign, I can only imagine how good it gets with four more years of your country trying not to drown in that gene pool.

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Ben Folds, Aimee Mann also join in special cameos, ring tone promotions

On a recent episode of CSI: NY, Detective Danny Messer's cell phone rang with a familiar tone. "Coldplay?" his partner asks. "Yeah," says Messer. "It's called 'Talk' -- something my girlfriend's really good at." In two commercial breaks that followed, CBS ran ads for the ring tone used on the show - the second single from Coldplay's multiplatinum X&Y -- before it was available elsewhere. No money changed hands for the product placement or commercials, but revenue from ring tones sold during the one-week offer -- at $2.50 a pop -- was split evenly between CBS and Capitol.

"The Coldplay ring tone was an experiment," Nancy Tellem, president of CBS Entertainment, says of the November 30th episode. "The hope is that, in the future, ring tones could provide additional revenue for us." CBS hopes to earn income from ring tones of theme songs and music featured prominently on other shows. The CSI deal is part of CBS' broader efforts to integrate music into its programming: "We are recognizing that we can do a lot more with the labels," says Tellem. "And they are recognizing that we can really get their artists in front of a lot of people."

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Cited as an influence on many new UK bands, and, at the same time, dubbed outdated and irrelevant, Noel Gallagher [pictured] is not all that enthusiastic about the music scene these days.

For him, the last great album was Parachutes, the debut album by Coldplay. So it's probably not a surprise that Chris Martin has said how Coldplay were influenced by Definitely Maybe.

"I feel flattered," Gallagher said. "I've got to say I don't hear it in the music, but that's cool because I like Coldplay a lot."

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Singer Chris Martin and the other three members of Coldplay had answered questions from a select group of McCallum High School music students for about half an hour after sound check for Friday's "Austin City Limits" taping when the show's producer asked Martin to leave the teenagers with one final thought.

"Here's something," the affable pop star said, raising a finger in the air, as if deep in thought. "Matthew McConaughey's in his 30s, right, and there's absolutely no hair on his chest. How did that happen?"

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If the members of U2 [pictured] are experiencing Vertigo these days, it's because they're looking down from an impressive height.

Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, an outspoken admirer, notes that "of all the bands that we loved as kids, they’re the only ones still going and still going great. They’re a towering presence, and to us they represent kind of a peak."

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The slightly more polished full-length Stars of CCTV was released last July and went straight into the top 10 of the album charts. It earned the band a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize.

"First, we were playing in New York when we heard about the Mercury. We were just about to play a gig in a venue called The Mercury Lounge, so we thought we were being given some sort of award just for playing the gig. It was weird. Then, o­n the night of the awards, we lost out by just o­ne vote o­n winning it to Antony and The Johnsons. I know a lot of bands say that, but we were actually told by two of the judges that it o­nly went to them o­n the casting vote.

"But, still, it was great to be there with bands such as Coldplay. Our entire recording costs wouldn't have covered Coldplay's macrobiotic yoghurt budget for the day."

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It's been said there are only two sure things in life: death and taxes. Well, you can probably add another item to that list: massive first-week numbers for Coldplay albums.

The band's much-anticipated third album, X&Y, moved more than 730,000 copies in its first week of release (see "Coldplay Beat Peas And Stripes By A Mile With X&Y"), only further cementing Coldplay's status as one of rock's few sure bets in an era of bling, Bentleys and general un-rockingness. In fact, you could make the argument that they are such a huge act that they don't even need to make a music video to sell records. And you'd probably be right.

This only made director Mark Romanek's job a whole lot more difficult. Tapped to helm the video for "Speed of Sound", the first single from X&Y, his mission was to make a beautiful, stately, emotional video for a band that didn't really need a beautiful, stately or emotional video. Or a video at all, for that matter. But Romanek's talent lies in his ability to read between the company lines, somewhere beneath the profit margins. He knew that while Coldplay really didn't need a video, their fans did.

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NEW YORK -- With some 20 million albums sold worldwide, it's clear Coldplay has its share of fans. What surprises singer Chris Martin is all the people who actively hate the band.

Coldplay doesn't inspire much ambivalence.

"Everyone tells me it's very healthy," Martin recently told The Associated Press. "It's very depressing, but it's very healthy. We always have this bubbling level of vitriol."

Both sides have renewed the debate with the release of "X&Y," the band's third album. The disc is an ambitious attempt to cement Coldplay's status as one of the world's top rock bands.

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The morning after four bombs detonate in London, Chris Martin climbs aboard a Number Twenty-nine red double-decker bus and up its winding stairs. As we slowly putter south down Camden Road, Martin whips back the top of his hooded sweat shirt, smiles and says, "I haven't done this in so long."

He's not talking about riding public transportation but rather about a visit to his old neighborhood, where he and Coldplay first started writing, rehearsing and performing the songs that would shape the group's rise to the top of the charts. Soon we are riding by the former Laurel Tree club, the site of Coldplay's very first gig -- a sold-out affair under the awful name Starfish -- and where they scored their first paycheck, for 80 pounds (about $130), and split it four ways.

Read the full excerpt from Rolling Stone here

Coldplay released the album “X&Y” exclusively on iTunes, with two extra songs not available anywhere else, the great clatter heard around the world was the sound of records being broken.

The first single, “Speed of Sound,” is the best-selling song on Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store – not a surprise, given that digital downloading has been all about singles, which make up more than 98 percent of all digital sales.

What was surprising, even stunning, was the album sales. In the first week of its June release, “X&Y” sold 64,000 albums through iTunes, eclipsing the 37,000 sales during the first week of U2’s heavily promoted “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.”“When we launched U2, you knew that was a big number. Now you see bands like Coldplay come in and double that,” said Steve Berman, head of marketing and sales for Interscope, U2’s record label.

With “X&Y,” iTunes proved that the digital medium can sell albums, not just singles – a watershed for the still-fledgling online music model. For artists and record labels that have been trying to figure out how to continue selling albums in the digital age, Coldplay showed that it could be done.

At least it could be done on iTunes. The Coldplay success provides more evidence of Apple’s dominance over online competitors like Los Angeles-based Napster Inc., Yahoo Inc. or RealNetworks Inc. “ITunes has done a tremendous job,” said Berman, who also heads up sales and marketing for the Geffen and A&M labels, all part of Universal Music Group. “I’m sure these other partners we have in digital music will continue to grow and figure out their business.”

Marketing strategy

Coldplay’s strategy is a case study on how online marketing has advanced in just a matter of months. Where the U2 release late last year relied on iTunes exclusivity and a televised iPod commercial featuring the band, Coldplay’s label, EMI Music, made sure to assault consumers from all fronts – using a wider set of marketing partners than just Apple.

A deal with Cingular Wireless LLC had a song clip from “Speed of Sound” available as a ring tone a week before it was heard on radio. Two weeks before the album’s June 7 release, the band appeared on “Saturday Night Live,” and Apple ran an iTunes commercial featuring the band’s new video and offering the album for pre-order on iTunes.

Yahoo Music posted an online version of the video on its Web site that week, but could not sell the album. MTV Networks’ Web site, MTV.com, streamed the album exclusively for the week prior to its release, but it was not downloadable. The day of the release, AOL Music had an exclusive stream of a Coldplay concert, again available for listening, not purchase.

But when it came time to purchase the album, all roads led to iTunes, though EMI is careful not to play favorites in talking about the campaign. “We had lots of different initiatives with Coldplay and lots of our digital partners,” said Jeanne Meyer, senior vice president with EMI Music, a unit of EMI Group Plc. “To suggest there was just one is a misnomer.”

Apple’s Web site is still the only place to download the album with the two bonus tracks, although the regular album became available through all services after its release date.

“I don’t think top acts are going to go with smaller companies on an exclusive,” said Frederick Moran, media analyst with the Stanford Group. “Players with clout like Apple iTunes can attempt to corner proprietary content.”

But why would AOL Music want to be part of a marketing effort that ultimately sends customers somewhere else? Because it got a live concert, which was viewed more than 700,000 times the first week, according to EMI. As for Yahoo, Coldplay was the number one rock video title during its debut week.

Source: labusinessjournal.com

Coldplay X&Y Review

Source: Daily Mail, UK, Friday 3 June, 2005

The main thing that strikes you about the new Coldplay album is not the geometric sleeve or Chris Martin's aching vocals. It's the way that Britain's best band have turned themselves into a wide-screen production: big, broad, and surely bound for world domination. X&Y attempts to do for Coldplay what 1984's the unforgetable fire did for U2.

There have been changes aplenty in and around the group since 2002's A Rush of Blood To The Head, which sold 10Million. Singer Martin had married actress Gwyneth Paltrow and become a father. And a swathe on new bands - Keane, SnowPatrol and Athlete - have all staked claims to Coldplays melodic rock crown.

The quartets response has been to roughen up and return with an accomplished 12track collection which keeps one eye on reiterating their core values (the elegaic soft-tempo ballads of old remain) and another on establishing a more muscular outlook that will win over stadium audiences from Berlin to BuenosAires.

In making these subtle refinements, Coldplay are heavily indebted to U2: guitarist JohnnyBuckland'd playing is drenched in delay and reverb. But there are other influences at play too/ The bands artful, imaginative chord changes and Martins piano work recall The Beatles (particularly Abbey road) while there are also nods to German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk.

X&Y opens with 2 potential hits, both of which are stronger than Speed of Sound, the Coldplay single that was beaten to no1 by CrazyFrog's AXelF, adisco remix of the worlds most hated ringtone.

SquareOne is a chugging u2-inspired workout.WhatIf is a mellower piano ballad which finds Martin in PaulMcCartner mode. Coldplay's new energised approach is again evident on White Shadows, a full-pelt rocker, and FixYou, which builds towards a choral climax. It's easy to imagine the latter, apparently inspired by Jimmy Cliffs Many Rivers to Cross, being sung by thousands when the band headline the second night of the Glastonbury Festival this month.

Another early track, Talk, steals it's riff from Kraftwerks Computer love. The psychedelic title track meanwhile rounds of the first part of the album - the 'X' songs - by harking back to Pink Floyd.

The second half - The Y songs - pales slightly in comparison.. Speed of Sound, a single built around a descending piano motif and will champions pounding drums, has something of a Coldplay-by-numbers feel to it. The closing track, Twisted Logic, is lumpy and plodding.

Then there are the words. On tracks such as a Message - 'My song is love alone and I'm on fire for you' - Martin finds it hard to escape a lyrical vagueness. The singer would argue that he lets listeners put their own interpretations on the songs. But, despite his poetic turn of phrase, it is sometimes hard to tell what a Coldplay song is all about.

However X&Y rushes to a satisfying conclusion. The Hardest Part is a jangly pop tune worthy of REM while Swallowed in The Sea is an immediate rolling soft-rock anthem that confidently restated the bands traditional strengths. X&Y is Coldplays most fully realised record. It is lush and layered without relying on it's slick modern production. Those who persist in calling the group dull are influenced more by Martins refusal to conform to any Wild Man Of Rock stereotype than anything particularly bland in the quartets music.

Of the 12 songs here, at least 3 -What If, Fix You, and Swallowed in The Sea - will quickly worm their way into the hearts of millions. Others such as the title track, reveal their qualities more stealthily.

Coldplay agonised long and hart ove X&Y. The result is a progressive album that moves the band forward without straying too far from the blueprint established on Parachutes and A Rush Of Blood To The Head.

Source: Daily Mail, Friday, June 3.

It is the afternoon of Coldplay's feverishly anticipated concert at Metro last weekend, and singer Chris Martin is for the first time hearing a blow-by-blow description of the ticket sale that preceded it.

Hundreds of fans waited in line at the club's box office for hours the previous weekend, only to be shut out of tickets when the show sold out in mere seconds. Within hours, the $23 tickets were being auctioned by scalpers for $700 or more on eBay.

Martin tilts back on a footstool in his hotel suite and sighs.

"We screwed up royally, and we should be assassinated for it." It's intended at least partly as a joke, but Martin's grim expression says otherwise. In a few hours he will lead Coldplay into a club packed with adoring fans, including his wife, actress Gwyneth Paltrow. The idea is to prime audiences for Coldplay's forthcoming album, "X&Y" (Capitol), due out June 6, the follow-up to two of the most successful rock albums of the decade, "Parachutes" (2000) and "A Rush of Blood to the Head" (2002), which have sold nearly 6 million copies in America, according to Scoundscan, and 20 million worldwide.The British quartet is poised for an even bigger year. "In terms of the tension and anticipation [surrounding its concerts and forthcoming album], I feel this could be the biggest band in the world," says Andy Cirzan, vice president with Jam Productions. The band is poised for a major national tour that will bring it to the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wis., on Aug. 13, a venue 40 times the size of Metro. "They're worth 35,000 to 50,000 tickets in this market," says Cirzan, which explains why demand for the Metro tickets was so over the top.

But at the moment Martin isn't feeling much like celebrating. He's a rock star finding himself confronted with the realities of rock stardom, of being in a band with three college friends that has turned into a big-time, money-churning machine from which millions of people, from record company executives and radio programmers to journalists and everyday fans, want a piece.

Martin tries to continue with the interview, but he's obviously distracted. "I can't go on with this until I do something," he says, and jumps up to summon his tour manager, Dave Holmes.

"Let's do a free show!" Martin suggests. "A free show at sound check. We'll do seven songs for anybody who wants to drop in. Announce it on the radio this afternoon and just invite everybody."

Holmes gets on it. After agitated phone calls are placed to a local promoter, the idea is shelved because there's a Cubs game at Wrigley Field down the street from Metro that afternoon, and an open invitation from a band as big as Coldplay could turn Clark Street into a riot zone. Martin shifts to Plan B. He authorizes that every available ticket in the band's possession be handed out to ticketless fans milling around in front of Metro before the show, instead of returning them to the box office for sale. At the last minute, about 50 additional fans are ushered into the concert as Coldplay's guests. Some find Martin in the basement Smart Bar after the show to personally thank him.

"There were a few people who got in who were almost crying because they got handed these free tickets," said Cirzan, a vice president of Jam Productions who promoted the concert. "A lot of bands would've wanted a press release -- `Look what we did!' These guys just wanted to make a gesture in a difficult situation. When you play in a much smaller place like this, there are bound to be some disappointed people who aren't going to get in."

Viewing the world

Martin's a worrier, the kind of a rock star who says he tries not to take his wealth and fame for granted. For several years, he's traveled to Third World countries and campaigned for fair-trade policies to ease pressure on impoverished economies. He draws attention to the cause by brightly taping his fingers and inking an "equal" sign on his left hand, which he says encourages questions. "I'd be a bastard if I were interviewed every day and didn't at least mention a few things once or twice that didn't have to do with my band," he says.

At the same time, he acknowledges his band is on a mission to be the "biggest" in the world. "Maybe it's because we're raised on reading U2 books," he says, "but there is no shame in joining the mainstream, of wanting the biggest possible platform for your views. I'm not saying we'll be as successful as U2, because I don't mean `big' in terms of size. I mean `big' in terms of the weight of what we can do."

As Martin finds with the Chicago ticket controversy, it also means the band must be more diligent about the potential for its music and audience to be abused. "We signed the recording contract with a big corporation to help us accomplish our goal of being a big band," Martin says. "Everything in the world is coming down to a few corporations owning everything. We need to deal with that, or not be part of it. The one thing I'm totally comfortable with is that the record we've made is artistically exactly as we wished it. It's going to be packaged and used by a corporation to sell things, and it will be torn apart by certain people. But I'm at peace because we put everything we could into it as a band."

Biggest band in the world? It's a dubious aspiration, especially for a singer whose persona resembles an idealistic schoolteacher more than it does a ruthless climber. The affable, apple-cheeked 28-year-old son of an accountant and a teacher, he is the antithesis of the disheveled rock 'n' roll bad boy.

"We were never very cool," says Martin, who met his future bandmates Will Champion, Jon Buckland and Guy Berryman in 1996 when they were attending University College in London. Middle-class, earnest and smitten by the music of Radiohead and Jeff Buckley, they set out to write folk-rock songs that would measure up to the work of their heroes. When the single "Yellow" became a huge hit in Europe and then later in North America, it catapulted them to a level of fame that invited a backlash in the U.K. Alan McGee, founder of one of England's cutting-edge labels, Creation, infamously dubbed Coldplay "bed-wetters" for their lack of properly edgy Oasis-like "attitude."

But if Coldplay never did quite develop a sneer, it did get better and bolder. The quartet's songs were always exquisite, its best melodies rapturous.

"As a songwriter, Chris Martin is in the classic English tradition with people like Ray Davies and Pete Townshend," says U2's Bono. "Their tunes get under your skin, and there's an ecstatic quality to the music that becomes more apparent each time you listen."

What was lacking, until now, was the boldness that separates well-crafted songs from great rock. If they weren't exactly bed-wetters, Coldplay once tended to come off as overly modest, almost awkward in concert.

"There's a strange paradox because we think we're the best band in the world, but there's always a side of us that is quite surprised to have people agree with us," says Coldplay drummer Champion. "It took us a long time to accept that people are not paying to see us be weak and apologetic about our songs. We have to stand up and fire at them. We were playing all these radio festivals in America during our first tour [in 2001], and we were sandwiched between bands like System of a Down, Staind and Disturbed, and we were getting abused. The audience was throwing things at us. Then we played our own show in Atlanta soon after, and it was an amazing feeling. It freed us up. We thought if we're going to do something, we should show our passion because people will respond to it."

It is the afternoon of Coldplay's feverishly anticipated concert at Metro last weekend, and singer Chris Martin is for the first time hearing a blow-by-blow description of the ticket sale that preceded it.

Hundreds of fans waited in line at the club's box office for hours the previous weekend, only to be shut out of tickets when the show sold out in mere seconds. Within hours, the $23 tickets were being auctioned by scalpers for $700 or more on eBay.

Martin tilts back on a footstool in his hotel suite and sighs.

"We screwed up royally, and we should be assassinated for it." It's intended at least partly as a joke, but Martin's grim expression says otherwise. In a few hours he will lead Coldplay into a club packed with adoring fans, including his wife, actress Gwyneth Paltrow. The idea is to prime audiences for Coldplay's forthcoming album, "X&Y" (Capitol), due out June 6, the follow-up to two of the most successful rock albums of the decade, "Parachutes" (2000) and "A Rush of Blood to the Head" (2002), which have sold nearly 6 million copies in America, according to Scoundscan, and 20 million worldwide.

The British quartet is poised for an even bigger year. "In terms of the tension and anticipation [surrounding its concerts and forthcoming album], I feel this could be the biggest band in the world," says Andy Cirzan, vice president with Jam Productions. The band is poised for a major national tour that will bring it to the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wis., on Aug. 13, a venue 40 times the size of Metro. "They're worth 35,000 to 50,000 tickets in this market," says Cirzan, which explains why demand for the Metro tickets was so over the top.

But at the moment Martin isn't feeling much like celebrating. He's a rock star finding himself confronted with the realities of rock stardom, of being in a band with three college friends that has turned into a big-time, money-churning machine from which millions of people, from record company executives and radio programmers to journalists and everyday fans, want a piece.

Martin tries to continue with the interview, but he's obviously distracted. "I can't go on with this until I do something," he says, and jumps up to summon his tour manager, Dave Holmes.

"Let's do a free show!" Martin suggests. "A free show at sound check. We'll do seven songs for anybody who wants to drop in. Announce it on the radio this afternoon and just invite everybody."

Holmes gets on it. After agitated phone calls are placed to a local promoter, the idea is shelved because there's a Cubs game at Wrigley Field down the street from Metro that afternoon, and an open invitation from a band as big as Coldplay could turn Clark Street into a riot zone. Martin shifts to Plan B. He authorizes that every available ticket in the band's possession be handed out to ticketless fans milling around in front of Metro before the show, instead of returning them to the box office for sale. At the last minute, about 50 additional fans are ushered into the concert as Coldplay's guests. Some find Martin in the basement Smart Bar after the show to personally thank him.

"There were a few people who got in who were almost crying because they got handed these free tickets," said Cirzan, a vice president of Jam Productions who promoted the concert. "A lot of bands would've wanted a press release -- `Look what we did!' These guys just wanted to make a gesture in a difficult situation. When you play in a much smaller place like this, there are bound to be some disappointed people who aren't going to get in."

Viewing the world

Martin's a worrier, the kind of a rock star who says he tries not to take his wealth and fame for granted. For several years, he's traveled to Third World countries and campaigned for fair-trade policies to ease pressure on impoverished economies. He draws attention to the cause by brightly taping his fingers and inking an "equal" sign on his left hand, which he says encourages questions. "I'd be a bastard if I were interviewed every day and didn't at least mention a few things once or twice that didn't have to do with my band," he says.

At the same time, he acknowledges his band is on a mission to be the "biggest" in the world. "Maybe it's because we're raised on reading U2 books," he says, "but there is no shame in joining the mainstream, of wanting the biggest possible platform for your views. I'm not saying we'll be as successful as U2, because I don't mean `big' in terms of size. I mean `big' in terms of the weight of what we can do."

As Martin finds with the Chicago ticket controversy, it also means the band must be more diligent about the potential for its music and audience to be abused. "We signed the recording contract with a big corporation to help us accomplish our goal of being a big band," Martin says. "Everything in the world is coming down to a few corporations owning everything. We need to deal with that, or not be part of it. The one thing I'm totally comfortable with is that the record we've made is artistically exactly as we wished it. It's going to be packaged and used by a corporation to sell things, and it will be torn apart by certain people. But I'm at peace because we put everything we could into it as a band."

Biggest band in the world? It's a dubious aspiration, especially for a singer whose persona resembles an idealistic schoolteacher more than it does a ruthless climber. The affable, apple-cheeked 28-year-old son of an accountant and a teacher, he is the antithesis of the disheveled rock 'n' roll bad boy.

"We were never very cool," says Martin, who met his future bandmates Will Champion, Jon Buckland and Guy Berryman in 1996 when they were attending University College in London. Middle-class, earnest and smitten by the music of Radiohead and Jeff Buckley, they set out to write folk-rock songs that would measure up to the work of their heroes. When the single "Yellow" became a huge hit in Europe and then later in North America, it catapulted them to a level of fame that invited a backlash in the U.K. Alan McGee, founder of one of England's cutting-edge labels, Creation, infamously dubbed Coldplay "bed-wetters" for their lack of properly edgy Oasis-like "attitude."

But if Coldplay never did quite develop a sneer, it did get better and bolder. The quartet's songs were always exquisite, its best melodies rapturous.

"As a songwriter, Chris Martin is in the classic English tradition with people like Ray Davies and Pete Townshend," says U2's Bono. "Their tunes get under your skin, and there's an ecstatic quality to the music that becomes more apparent each time you listen."

What was lacking, until now, was the boldness that separates well-crafted songs from great rock. If they weren't exactly bed-wetters, Coldplay once tended to come off as overly modest, almost awkward in concert.

"There's a strange paradox because we think we're the best band in the world, but there's always a side of us that is quite surprised to have people agree with us," says Coldplay drummer Champion. "It took us a long time to accept that people are not paying to see us be weak and apologetic about our songs. We have to stand up and fire at them. We were playing all these radio festivals in America during our first tour [in 2001], and we were sandwiched between bands like System of a Down, Staind and Disturbed, and we were getting abused. The audience was throwing things at us. Then we played our own show in Atlanta soon after, and it was an amazing feeling. It freed us up. We thought if we're going to do something, we should show our passion because people will respond to it."

Source: Chicago Tribune

He may wear a hoodie from time to time and has a bit of previous when it comes to paparazzi, but for all his rock 'n' roll trappings he is as far from yob culture and celebrity sleaze as it's possible for a rock star to be. He has chart success, critical acclaim and Gwynnie. Now for that difficult third album...

He frequently stalks the streets in a "hoodie" pulled up to disguise his face, and has been in trouble for the occasional scuffle. Chris Martin would not, presumably, be welcome at the Bluewater shopping centre.

The Coldplay singer is, of course, not some sort of social undesirable. He doesn't do drugs. His efforts to remain hidden stem from his almost painful aversion to the limelight. His occasional forays into fisticuffs are reserved for the paparazzi who invade his private world. For the frontman of one of the world's biggest bands, used to performing to tens of thousands in arenas, his reticent approach to fame is unconventional. But then, he's a clean-cut, middle-class boy. Liam Gallagher he ain't."I don't care about being big. I don't care about being famous," Martin said recently. "What matters is trying to write the best tunes in the world." Martin, 28, has made something of a rod for his own back in the fame stakes. As if being a hugely successful musician was not enough to make him a tabloid draw, he married Hollywood superstar Gwyneth Paltrow in a secret, no-frills ceremony in California, in December 2003. Their daughter Apple was born five months later.

His ability to write the world's finest music will shortly be tested when the group's third album X & Y is released on 6 June, a fortnight after the release of single "Speed of Sound", the band's first new material for nearly three years. There is a huge weight of expectation for the album whose predecessor A Rush of Blood to the Head sold ten million copies. So much so that when its release was delayed from the past financial year, the band's parent label EMI had to put out a profit warning because sales would be lower than expected. Share prices immediately dropped 16 per cent.

So far, the signs are good, with promising reviews for live airings of Coldplay's new material. "Speed of Sound", now receiving radio play, is a track in the vein of their huge hit Clocks, making it destined to become a soundbed for numerous TV sports highlight segments. It has already repeated a feat achieved by only the Beatles, going straight into the top ten of the US singles chart. Martin has admitted to nerves about a comeback. "We're due a backlash, aren't we?" he has said.

Others believe he should lighten up, have a bit more confidence and play the rock'n'roll star. "Chris Martin I love. Top band Coldplay. But he's coming back saying, 'I haven't met anyone that's liked us in two years'," said Noel Gallagher. "That's not the spirit. People want rock stars. People don't want someone to walk on to a stage and say, 'I'm the same as you.' They want someone to go on stage and say, 'You? You could never be like me, 'cos I'm from another planet.'"

Alan McGee, the record boss who discovered Gallagher, raged against what he saw as Martin and Coldplay's blandness by saying they made "music for bedwetters". However unfashionable he found their music - whiny and apologetic, according to many - they have paved the way for a wave of other bands who fit the same glum rock - or wimp rock, call it what you will - mould. Keane and Thirteen Reasons are among those who have used the piano-led rock format.

Certainly more people are buying into Coldplay than McGee's former charges, much as Gallagher likes to think his is the biggest and greatest band in the world. Where once Noel would be entertained at Downing Street, it is Martin that can command the attention of the Prime Minister. He is reported to have received a call from Mr Blair after lauding his efforts to alleviate poverty and Third World debt. It is one of the subjects closest to Martin's heart; he often scrawls the slogan Make Trade Fair on the back of his hand during gigs, a much-mocked trait. Readers of the music paper NME even believe that the singer himself would make a promising PM, if a pre-election poll is to be believed.

Martin , whose father was an accountant and mother a teacher, grew up near Exeter and attended Sherborne, a Dorset public school where he listened to U2 and entertained dreams of emulating their success. Tellingly he put up a poster of the Irish superstars while recording X & Y.

The seeds of Coldplay were sown at University College London where Martin read ancient world studies, hooking up with guitarist Jon Buckland, bass player Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion to further his musical ambitions. They couldn't have looked less like a chart-topping band. Lumpy or lanky, gawky and unfashionable. For the cover of the band's debut album Parachutes, released in 2000, Martin sported a monstrous mop of blond curls which shared some sort of kinship with the early hairdo sported by U2's Adam Clayton. By the time of the video for the group's breakthrough single "Yellow" he had ditched it for the more manageable crop he still favours.

After that single the band's star rose almost inexorably, even riding out the embarrassing faux pas of their frontman. The audience at the NME Awards in 2001 squirmed in their seats when he mocked singer Craig David for having hair like a cauliflower. In fact he rarely delivers an acceptance speech which is less than cringe-making, although it is generally given with the best of intentions.

With such stardom in his grasp, it was only a matter of time before he landed a glamorous girlfriend, but even he was taken aback at an Oscar-winning catch like Paltrow whom he met at a party. Probably a dream come true for a man who remained a virgin until he was 22. "This is all very weird because she's a big Hollywood star, and I'm just the bloke from Coldplay," he admitted in the early days of their romance. In a way it has been a perfect match - both are shy, earnest and clean-living, careful about their diet and bookish, although they are unpalatably wholesome for some. Both are keen to keep their relationship under wraps.

"I don't talk about my private life and I think that's fair enough," said Martin. Charity work is however a different matter. He has thrown himself wholeheartedly into work for Oxfam and Fair Trade, acting as an ambassador for their work in Africa. On a recent visit to Ghana he became aware of his mortality when his plane got into difficulties. He thought, "I'll be dying on a Fair Trade trip so at least people will always link me with that."

But he is by no means without a sense of humour. He demonstrated that with aplomb in a spoof video posted briefly on the band's website in which he and his bandmates, calling themselves the Nappies, performed a track for Paltrow concerning the forthcoming birth of Apple. His inspired payoff should convince even the most ardent critics of his lyrical prowess. "I know you'll be grumpy/That's what everyone says/You aren't going to hump me/ For 43 days." You wouldn't catch Noel Gallagher writing a line like that.

Source: Independent

Friday the 13th was not unlucky for the 2,000 fans who smiled their way into Avalon last night to see Coldplay. Avalon owner Patrick Lyons said he had more ticket requests to this than for any other show in his history there -- and that includes past dates by a few folks named Prince, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan.

The British band has sold 16 million albums and won four Grammys in the last five years. And recently, its new single, ''Speed of Sound," entered Billboard's Hot 100 at No. 8 -- the first time a British group accomplished that since the Beatles entered the Top Ten with ''Hey Jude" back in another lifetime (1968).

Coldplay's response was a modest, aw-shucks attitude from the stage last night: ''It's quite extraordinary that we've been away [a couple of years], but people still come out to see us," said singer Chris Martin. The pressures must nevertheless be enormous -- the band's record label was frustrated when the new album, ''X&Y," was pushed back to a June 7 release because the band took so much time in the studio -- and it must be hard to read article after article that labels you the next U2.The Avalon show, however, was a congenial affair, almost like a casual night at a local bar. Martin and his mates were relaxed throughout -- and they seamlessly stitched new material around such fan-friendly hits as ''Yellow" and ''Clocks." The band still owes a large debt to U2 -- especially with guitarist Jonny Buckland's trebly shimmers evoking the sound of U2's The Edge -- and with Martin singing hypersensitive lyrics that might even make Bono blush.

But the show also revealed Coldplay's increased confidence. Martin was charismatic whether he was playing guitar or keyboards -- and the new songs were mostly gems, such as the piano-riffing ''Square One," the surging ''Speed of Sound," and the soft-toned piano ballad ''Fix You" (about trying to help a someone out of a crisis). Other new standouts were the tender ''What If" (with Martin fretting, ''What if you should decide that you don't want me there by your side?"), and the acoustic ''Till Kingdom Come," a love-pleading, folk-country tune originally written for Johnny Cash.

An advance listen of the new album suggests there may be too many downtempo songs (''Speed of Sound" jumps out as one of the few rockers), but that's a concern for another day. For now, Coldplay just seems happy to be back onstage -- and the bond it attained with last night's crowd was undeniably magical. (Look for Coldplay to next play the Tweeter Center on Aug. 6, with tickets expected to go on sale June 4.)

Boston Globe

Britain's top two rock bands are releasing albums within a week of each other. Neil McCormick from The Telegraph has heard them both

Oasis and Coldplay, arguably the most popular and significant rock bands in the UK, are set to release new albums which should reveal a great deal about the healthy state of British pop music.

This is no bitter Blur vs Oasis rivalry. They may seem worlds apart in terms of background and sensibility - the hedonistic, defiantly working-class Manchester lads and the polite public school students from the south - but there is surprising respect between both camps.Oasis's band leader Noel Gallagher describes Coldplay as a "top band. They blew me away." Coldplay singer and songwriter Chris Martin says that Oasis songs were pivotal in his own development. "They're lad anthems," he says, "but you don't have to be a lad to like them. They're for everyone. When Noel cares and he's got something to say about his life, then he's untouchable."

Which is not to say that Coldplay don't have ambitions to reach the same dizzy heights as Oasis. At the root of both bands is an overarching optimism, fierce ambition and respect for the power of song as a vehicle for human dreams. "I don't see it as competing against any other person," Martin has said. "I just see it as pushing what we can do as far as we can. What matters is trying to write the best tunes in the world."

Following the worldwide success of 2001's A Rush of Blood to the Head there is a sense that Coldplay are poised on the brink of all-conquering global household name status. Noel Gallagher, however, is not going to surrender the mantle of Britain's Greatest Living Band easily. "There is always this thing about passing the torch," according to Noel. "But the torch is never passed, it's taken away. We took it off the Stone Roses. Chris Martin has to take it off us."

Oasis are up first. Their single Lyla is released on Monday, followed by their sixth studio album, Don't Believe the Truth. Coldplay release a single, Speed of Sound, on May 23, followed by their third album X&Y. Both albums took more than a year to record amid aborted sessions, changes of producer, much rethinking and rewriting.

Despite this, Don't Believe the Truth is the kind of pithy, lively little rock and roll album that sounds as if it might have been recorded in a week in a sweaty basement. (Early experimental sessions with psychedelic dance-rock producers Death in Vegas were quickly scrapped by Noel.) The elder Gallagher doesn't so much wear his influences on his sleeve as parade them like a robber baron showing off his swag.

Mucky Fingers has the chunky rhythm of the Velvet Underground's Waiting for the Man, Lyla purloins a melody from the Rolling Stones' Street Fighting Man, The Importance of Being Idle may be the greatest Kinks song Ray Davies never wrote, and the epic ballad Let There Be Love rises from a Lennon-esque electric piano sequence (the closest thing to a genuine singalong classic on the album). And then there are the usual shades of the Beatles, T-Rex and Led Zeppelin.

After the morbid introspection that had infected recent offerings, Noel's songs display the kind of belligerent optimism that characterised Oasis at their height. It is part of the paradoxical charm of this band that they can combine a kind of brutal hard-rock aesthetic with a sunny, singalong optimism. Liam Gallagher can turn blandishments such as "Let love be your guide" into a threat, singing with a sneer that makes you think it's a choice between love or a broken nose.

The odd chord shifts and sweet melodies of Liam's own three compositions confirm his growing abilities as a songwriter (albeit with an overriding Lennon obsession), while bassist Andy Bell and guitarist Gem Archer fill the album out with uplifting melodic rockers.

What is missing are the kind of generation-defining songs that made Oasis the essential band of their era. With its freshness and spirit, Don't Believe the Truth may be hailed as a return to form, but it does not reclaim the zeitgeist. It's a collection of songs that sound as if you've heard them before (and in some cases you probably have).

Coldplay have their eyes set higher. X&Y is an album that aches with its own significance. It opens with an atmospheric wash of synths and weird guitar treatments as portentous as anything in the Pink Floyd canon, over which Martin's voice floats, singing, "You're in control, is there anywhere you wanna go?"

It's a promise that he is going to take the listener on a journey. And when the full force of the band kicks in, the thrill of anticipation is high.

This is a lush, layered work, but at the core of the luxurious soundscapes are songs that get under the skin. If Oasis remain in thrall to the sonic thrust of hard rock, Coldplay are the undisputed kings of a new, softer form.

On tremulous, touching ballads such as What If and Fix You there is melodic sweetness, epigrammatic positivity and high, ""ooh ooo" harmonies oddly reminiscent of Wings. But if, in the Beatles template that also underpins Oasis, Martin's writing owes more to McCartney than Lennon, he has some of the questioning spirit, angry idealism and seriousness of purpose of the latter.

There is an edge to Coldplay, a kind of stuttering, indie grit that counteracts its sweetness. This is an album that asks questions about the state of the world and concludes not with blandishments about love but with the angry snarl of Twisted Logic, urging listeners to stand up for what they believe in.

Martin is not always the most eloquent songwriter. His rhyming can be trite (I suspect even Noel at his most throwaway would have baulked at Swallowed By the Sea's opening rhymes of "tree", "me" and "see"), his metaphors repetitive (there is a lot about the sea and outer space) and his melodies sometimes have a nursery-rhyme quality, but the emotional commitment of the performance, the modernity of his band's sound and the inventiveness of the constantly shifting arrangements (his songs are as immediate as Noel's without being quite so obvious) lend X&Y a sense of substance.

While the new Oasis album almost revels in its lack of pretension, X&Y is greater than the sum of its parts. I hate to break it to Noel, but I suspect that while Oasis have already staked their place in history, Coldplay are about to.

'Don't Believe the Truth' is released on May 30 on Big Brother records. '

X&Y' (Parlophone) is out on June 6.

Source: Telegraph

The cynic is compelled, amidst the frenzied run-up to what many are already touting as the rock album of the year, to ask a simple question: Why Coldplay?

Why, out of all the musicians plugging diligently away at their trade in this day and age, is this amiable troupe of young, sensitive Britons being touted as the group to unseat the likes of the Rolling Stones, U2 and Radiohead as the world's most beloved rock band? They're good, make no mistake — Coldplay's best songs ("Yellow," "Trouble," "Clocks") are the sort of indelible pop anthems that will haunt us all to our graves — but they're a bit too normal to qualify as the world's most interesting band.Why U2 or the Rolling Stones or Radiohead, though? What matters is consensus, and Coldplay is that rare rock 'n' roll animal that everyone can get behind: Not too arty to alienate the masses, ambitious enough in its populism to earn the respect of critics and music geeks, earnest and honest enough that even full-on haters will concede it's preferable to have them at the top of the charts and all over the radio than, say, Il Divo.

Having a handsome frontman who can seemingly compose exquisite girly-boy ballads in his sleep doesn't hurt, either; they may have moved a lot of units, but Fred Durst and Chad Kroeger will never hold quite the same sway over female record buyers that Chris Martin does.

The swooning faction was, thus, out in force for Coldplay's extremely hot-ticket club gig at Kool Haus last night (scalpers were offering to buy single tickets for in excess of $150), one of a handful of "intimate" North American dates cuing up the release next month of its third album, X&Y. Their boyfriends and husbands, however, were willing accomplices, and they stood alongside a full complement of hipsters, Brit-pop aficionados, writers and recording-industry types out for the occasion.

Coldplay — which played its first, sold-out Toronto gig in the same venue five years ago before quickly ascending to arenas and amphitheatres — demonstrated, meanwhile, that it has become more than capable of delivering the kind of sweepingly immodest musical gestures that rock superstars are supposed to deliver, and that X&Y will continue to do that process.

Blustery new number "Square One" segued seamlessly into A Rush of Blood to the Head's stirring "Politik" and "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face" at the outset, while "What If" and "Speed of Sound" commanded enough presence to compete with rapturously received standards like "In My Place," signature hit "Yellow" and the towering "Clocks." On the quieter side, a mildly Zeppelin-esque acoustic ditty that will serve as a hidden track on X&Y and Rush's lovely "Warning Sign" confirmed that Martin's talents as a singer and songwriter need not be applied to the self-conscious epic to shine.

If we must have a Biggest Band in the World, there are far more objectionable candidates for the job. Watch your back, Bono.

from today's edition of the Toronto Star, A31. No colour picture of them though! Only b&w of Chris. :(

[thanks timeo]

by BEN RAYNER

POP MUSIC CRITIC

One of Britain's most successful universities is appealing to its wealthiest alumni in an attempt to raise £300 million to maintain its world class status.

University College London, one of the top four establishments in the country and recently ranked 25th in the world, will imitate its American rivals this week by trying to persuade former students to donate a proportion of their income to university coffers.

It will be followed by a similar campaign by Cambridge University, which will be launched to coincide with its 800th anniversary in 2009.

Among possible benefactors to UCL's campaign are Ricky Gervais, the star of BBC2's hit comedy The Office, Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion and Guy Berryman from Coldplay, Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, Jonathan Dimbleby, the broadcaster, Sir Tom Courtney, the actor, and Digby Jones, the director general of the Confederation of British Industry.The campaign aims to create a new culture of giving among British graduates, who currently donate a tiny amount compared with American graduates. It is estimated that the most successful British universities receive donations from about 10 per cent of alumni, compared with more than 50 per cent who give in the United States.

Prof Malcolm Grant, the Provost of University College London, told the Telegraph that the £300 million which he hoped to raise in the next decade was vital to the university's competitiveness. This year, the institution dropped its world ranking by five places.

"Top-up fees will bring just £12 million to an overall annual budget of £520 million," he said. "It will not help us improve the basic infrastructure or improve staff salaries, which are a national disgrace in this country. We are losing academics to the US at an alarming rate. This afternoon I will be in discussions to try and put together a package for one of our scientists who has been offered a brilliant deal by a US institution. This major fund-raising campaign is essential to the university."

Prof Grant said that British universities were reticent about pursuing money from former students.

"We need to develop a culture of asking, as well as giving," he said. "We need to build relationships with high net worth individuals. In the US, huge donations are made by wealthy individuals and charitable foundations. I think it was Andrew Carnegie who said that 'the man who dies rich, dies disgraced'."

Alumni of the university signalled their support for the campaign last night.

Mike Burleigh, a novelist and historian, who donates to history department scholarships, said: "The best institutions in this country are chronically underfunded. If they were to properly pay staff and stop them moving abroad then they have got to get more money than the Government is paying them. Some American universities are like paradise in comparison."

David Lodge, the award-winning author, who graduated from the university in English in 1955, said: "American universities have been seeking help from alumni for some time. British universities could struggle to imitate them. I do, however, think it is a good idea."

The university plans to employ 30 staff to write to and call the 85,000 graduates on its mailing list.

Hamish Stewart, the director of fund-raising, said: "We are saying to alumni that you have an opportunity to invest in UCL to maintain its position as a global player and the better respected UCL is internationally, the more your degree is worth. We also want to show how their money can make a huge difference to generation of alumni following them. For most we would be looking in the region of £5 to £20 a month."

American Ivy League universities employ hundreds of people to pursue former students as soon as they graduate to secure monthly payments. The generosity of alumni in the US has helped to create large endowments, which generate their own income.

Harvard University announced this month that its endowment had passed $20 billion (£11 billion) for the first time, providing the institution with an annual income of £630 million. No British university has endowments topping £500 million.

Mr Jones, a UCL law graduate, is president of the campaign.

"I have had nothing to do with UCL since I left, which is typical of many alumni. I was delighted to get involved in the campaign, not only to help my alma mater, but make some real statements about how the country has to change in terms of paying something back.

"We have quite a number of universities which are world class, but we don't seem to appreciate them. If UCL was in the US, those that had benefited from the excellent education it provides would be giving back, either personally or corporately. We as a generation have succeeded on the back of a university education we did not have to pay for. I may not be a big donor, but I will be making a regular contribution."

Cambridge University has put together a team to work out plans for its campaign. It will be led by Alison Richard, the vice-chancellor and a former provost of Yale.

Source: Telegraph Online

An interesting interview of Simon Pegg has appeared on the internet. Simon Pegg, who has previously played harmonica on festival stages with Coldplay, is good friends of Chris Martin, and godfather of his daughter, Apple.

You can read the full interview here.

You may wish to read Coldplaying.com's review of the unofficial DVD released this year. It is posted here.

Last week we published a link to an article regarding Chris Martin's Dad's fight to build homes in Exeter, UK. For those who are interested, you can read the outcome here.

A few more links to the 'Nelly Furtado/Chris Martin' story can be found

here, here and here

Not to be outdone, The Sun has also posted an online article about Chris & Gwyneth's house move across London. This time, there's an added edge to it...

Read the article here.

An article unrelated to the band has popped up here.