jossec

It's funny cause the moment the acoustic guitar is audible most clearly is when he isn't playing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=zTDBMXT9i7g;m=2;s=29 But hey, at least the vocals on Clocks are live again! Edit: No they aren't, sadly I was mistaken.

There's always been songs with only a few performances, probably because they don't like playing them live. Moving to Mars, Yes, Another's Arms are a few examples. Thanks, I always like seeing backstage footage.

The top comment on YouTube puts it nicely:

Jonny's guitar solos are very loud on Up&Up, nice!

Well, it's not like it was even true when she wrote that. It was at some point, but not 2014. I'm really curious to see what'll happen to Clocks in the next leg of the tour, if anything. I still don't have a good answer as to why it was done. Chris' voice seems to be alright these days, much better than during some of the Ghost Stories concerts. Maybe this is just an experiment to figure out what their options are in the future, should his voice give up entirely someday.

In these two clips you can hear a pretty clear difference in the first line already, for instance he sings a different note on 'world'. So Viva still has live lead vocals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=A5byoOuBz2E;t=21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=M2A7W6f3G6E;t=27

The Tidal version was different? Maybe the wrong version was uploaded to Spotify then. Edit: the silence is also in the iTunes version, from what I could tell form the preview.

Yeah, there you can hear the echo of the "ooh" (of the full version) for one or two seconds, then it gets cut off.

Wow, there are some weird and harsh cuts in this radio edit. There's even complete silence at 1:23, as if they split up the track in their editor and forgot to connect the parts.

Coldplay disagrees, apparently. As someone suggested earlier though, it might not be that Clocks itself is too hard, but it could be an easy choice because there is less audience interaction compared to when Chris is at the front of the stage. That way the song could serve as a break between songs with live vocals. And to be honest, they pulled it off quite well; most people wouldn't notice unless they start comparing different performances like I did.

Same story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=WTiVQw8gXjE;m=2;s=37 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=wPdfP3wSDd0;m=2;s=15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=BXf4m_SGG6o;m=2;s=12

I don't know of any examples where you can clearly see that that they (Jonny & Guy) are, but usually when they're singing into the mics you can only hear this sort of 'choir' which, most of the time, sounds exactly like what's on the album. I've never been able to distinguish Guy's actual voice during a performance, Jonny very rarely (Don't Panic, Politik, maybe a few others). Here's an example for Will though: you can still hear the backing vocal but he's turned away from the mic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=fUvFUDRng4U;m=2;s=30 Also here's proof that Guy was faking the laser harp. (at 46:19) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=peU-Jku65II;m=46;s=9 Mobile Link: https://youtu.be/peU-Jku65II?t=46m9s

That might be a good explanation, although, weren't all of the shows sold out? Anyway, doesn't really matter, just thought it was an interesting statistic if it's even accurate.

That's quite a big difference between the 15th and the 17th, more than 5000. Any idea why that is?

Definitely seems like it, to me at least. If you're not convinced, the "oohs" near the end of the song sound exactly the same too. I guess it's being done because of his worsening voice, which I can somewhat understand, but it's sad nonetheless.

I’ve collected some videos of the live performances of Clocks so far on this tour: one video per concert. Take a listen and pay attention to Chris’s voice. The first four lines will probably suffice. I added some timestamps to the links for convenience. (Argentina, 31 March) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=CyjXwgSvRRw;t=27 (Argentina, 1 April) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=ris566TYIOE;t=22 (Chile) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=Y5kBSiuWmt0;t=27 (Peru) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=RXodQ0aypg8;t=22 (São Paulo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=N4KZfHaZp9k;t=26 (Rio de Janeiro) (Colombia) Thoughts? Edit: this doesn't seem to be the right subforum, I'm sorry. Perhaps someone could move the thread up one level in the hierarchy? Fixed, thanks AMDB9!

Is TV in the US always like this? There's so many ads. Edit: What do you mean? Edit 2: Ah I see, you meant it wasn't at the BRIT awards.

I doubted whether Will's voice was live at the BRIT awards performance, but this definitely was. Good!

Ah thanks, that's the one. I wasn't searching the right keywords apparently.

Right, I've no doubt that he's actually singing, it's just a question of whether or not what he's singing is also what we hear.

I also thought he always sang live in Magic until I watched the St John's Hackney Church performance, where you can see him stopping too early and hear the audio continuing. I'm convinced he's singing live in the Live Lounge performance though. For that performance of Magic they also got rid of the acoustic guitar in the backing track, probably for the same reason: the intimacy of this particular setting. Edit: Can't find any video of the Hackney Church performance, sadly. I guess it's understandable though: it must be very hard to do backing vocals well while drumming at the same time.

There are so many songs where Will's vocals aren't live I'd be surprised if they were in this performance. His voice did sound more raw than usually, so maybe it was a take done specifically for live performances; possibly even for just this one.

Yup, definitely some distortion going on there.

Interesting, Chris got out of sync with the backing track at the end of Christmas Lights and, reacting quickly, they just muted the backing track including Will's vocals.

Nice performance of Clocks, with a piano outro like in the Rush of Blood days!