The band has been together for 20 years, yet this weekend, its entire career will be summed up in about 12 minutes.
Coldplay, on the heels of announcing a U.S. stadium tour and releasing quite possibly its most controversial music video, is set to perform Sunday during the Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show. Bruno Mars and Beyonce are rumored to cameo during the set, which could break last year’s all-time TV audience record.
And it is Beyonce who also stars in the band’s latest video for its next single, “Hymn For The Weekend,” a track from “A Head Full Of Dreams” that Knowles guests on.
The video was filmed in India and relies heavily on what critics call stereotypes within the Indian culture, thus levying “cultural appropriation” accusations against Coldplay.
For the band’s part, in addition to shooting on location in Mumbai, the group enlisted Indian actress Sonam Kapoor for a small role. The Bollywood star appears for a few seconds, and judging by her enthusiasm for the role, appears to have no problem with the final piece.
“First of all, I am in a Chris Martin video and I am a huge fan of Coldplay. When I was in high school, I grew up (listening to) Oasis, Coldplay and U2,” she told Gulf News tabloid! overseas after the video’s release. “And if somebody told me at 16 that I was going to be in a video, I would go, ‘shut up.’”
That would have been 14 years ago; Coldplay at the time had just released its second of seven albums: “A Rush of Blood to the Head.” Even then, its discography of popular songs was quite vast: tracks like “Yellow,” “Trouble,” “In My Place,” “Clocks” and “The Scientist” had catapulted the band to global stardom.
All of those came years before the heartbreaking ballad “Fix You” and the anthem “Viva La Vida,” two of the band’s biggest songs to date. Coldplay will then take “AHFOD” across the globe; returning stateside on July 16, for a string of headlining stadium shows that start in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium. The band plays Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field Aug. 6.
Despite headlining festivals across the world and touring U.S. arenas on multiple occasions, this will be Coldplay’s first trek through stadiums in America. The seven dates that have been announced wrap with a Sept. 3 show in a venue that they’ll be more than familiar with: Levi Stadium in San Francisco, home of this weekend’s Super Bowl 50.
