stephen

Coldplay’s brand new single, Higher Power, has today been confirmed for release on Friday, May 7 via Parlophone / Atlantic. Said Coldplay on Twitter: “Higher Power is a song that arrived on a little keyboard and a bathroom sink at the start of 2020. It was produced by Max Martin who is a true wonder of the universe. It’s out on Friday 7 May. Love c, g, w & j” The announcement confirms fan rumors that have circulated since last week, when cryptic billboards around the world pointed to a mysterious website called alienradio.fm. Fans managed to decipher the letter-like symbols to uncover the song title and release date. The track is available to pre-order / pre-save on streaming platforms, from here.

It seems Coldplay are finally making a comeback as new music is teased through 'Alien Radio FM'. Coldplay are no stranger to unique album marketing methods, most notably, Everyday Life being teased through letters sent to fans and newspaper ads. However, the band's latest venture has been teased through alienradio.fm, a website resembling a radio scanner where the user moves their mouse cursor across the page to tune into different frequencies. Around 17 'stations' have been discovered so far, each playing an audio clip read in different languages. Coldplaying and ColdplayXtra discovered the website after a mysterious account started following Coldplay fans on Twitter. After some hardcore investigation done by the team, we broke the news on Friday that Alien Radio FM is very likely to be affiliated with Coldplay. The account proved its authenticity by tweeting a photo of posters in New York and on the London Underground along with co-ordinates to both locations. Throughout the night, Coldplay fans got to work on deciphering each aspect of the website and with each discovery came more clues. The website features a cryptic language that took a few hours to translate. ColdplayXtra led the decryption efforts by assuming Coldplay was the first string and using P, O, A, Y to fill the blanks. A common letter appeared and after presuming it to be 'E', the phrase became clear enough to break the news. It appeared as follows: The random glyphs had now been deciphered and with that, came a release date. 'Higher Power' and May 7th sound a lot like a release date for a single. May 7th also happens to fall on a Friday, the prime time for 99% of music releases. This all lines up with Coldplay's performance at Worthy Farm Live on 22nd May, giving them a perfect opportunity to perform the single at their first major live performance in years! As the pseudo-language had now been deciphered, fans started to decipher a much longer string of text that appeared on the top of the page. It read: Finally, Coldplaying made a dump of the audio files very early on so users of the forum could start translating the various 'stations' as soon as possible. The English stations were first to be understood with one station featuring a man reciting Aristotle's 'On The Heavens'. Other stations mostly talk about space related topics, with one Dutch station reciting Alice in Wonderland and a Czech station featuring a children's poem about an ant getting hurt. A 'numbers station' also exists on one of the frequencies. Hovering over a certain spot on the grid plays a simple melody while a cryptic code scrolls along the bottom of the screen. As of today, it has not been cracked, although many are assuming it's just a numbers station that has no message. Other theories and discoveries are currently being discussed on the Coldplaying Forum and I highly recommend giving it a read!