Coldplay
Accor Stadium, 6 November
Also, November 7, 9 and 10
Reviewed by SHAMIM RAZAVI
★★★★
There is more Donald Trump to Coldplay than meets the eye: neither overestimates their audience’s appetite for complexity, and both deliver their simple message forcefully. But that is where the similarities end.
Coldplay’s message of love and unity is delivered with a sincerity that gives hope light will prevail in the end. Even in addressing the day’s US election results, frontman Chris Martin resists dark, divisive condemnation but rather encourages his audience to send love to America so they can overcome their differences.
The relentlessly energetic Coldplay frontman, Chris Martin.Credit: Wolter Peeters
That transcendence is of a piece with the band’s current fixation with the cosmic: planets, spheres, moons, and aliens are the show’s unifying theme. Why this obsession is not quite clear: is it that on a universal level, we are all one, a reminder of the climate catastrophe or just an excuse for pretty colours and shapes?
Certainly, the circle of their inclusivity knows no bounds: sign language interpreters dotted around the stadium, admonishments to tall people not to block the view of shorties in the crowd, improvised serenades to individual fans spotlighted on screen, and more rainbows than a Pride parade are just part of Coldplay’s overwhelming effort for universality.
Every aspect of the show has the audience at its heart. Credit: Wolter Peeters
That ambition also extends to their music, channelling a diversity of influences into their distinctive, unifying sound. Selections from their alt-rock early work (Yellow, The Scientist) through to their two latest sphere-y albums get an airing. That later work often appears written for stadium listening, but even in this setting, numbers like ∞ and ♡ pass by without making much of a mark.
Perhaps those more ambient pieces are necessary to make the anthems – Viva La Vida, A Sky Full of Stars – pop even more, and if so, we can forgive their inclusion in an otherwise relentlessly energetic setlist.
The music is merely part of - or even just an excuse for - their show.Credit: Wolter Peeters
Ultimately, good as it is, their music is merely part of – or even just an excuse for – their show. Where other artists may appear to be playing for their own enjoyment, there is no question as to what motivates Coldplay.
Every note, every piece of confetti, every achingly thoughtful word and gesture Chris Martin musters has the audience’s entertainment - the collective euphoria of a stadium bathed in warm love - as its target. It is a target they unfailingly hit: even the hardest, cruellest heart would melt tonight.