IT’S a bittersweet week to be a Coldplay fan.
On Friday they will release their tenth album, Moon Music, featuring collaborations with Burna Boy, Ayra Starr and Jon Hopkins.
But while we can’t wait to hear it, the release puts us one step closer to the end of new music from the record-breakers.
Speaking frankly about the band’s future, frontman Chris Martin confirmed: “We are only going to do 12 proper albums and that’s real. Yeah. I promise.
“Because less is more. And for some of our critics, even less would be even more! It’s really important that we have that limit.
“There’s only seven Harry Potters. There’s only 12 and a half Beatles albums. There’s about the same for Bob Marley, so all of our heroes.
“Also having that limit means the quality control is so high right now, and for a song to make it, it’s almost impossible, which is great. And so where we could be coasting, we’re trying to improve.”
Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Chris said he and bandmates Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, Will Champion and Phil Harvey are now focused on the band’s legacy and what that means.
Chris said: “There’s something about the Coldplay thing. That’s just what . . . I don’t know where the songs come from. I don’t know where the ideas come from, but that’s just been coming to me for about four or five years now.
“Like, ‘You have to finish like this,’ and I trust that just like I trust the songs. So if we do something together after that creatively beyond touring, then it’ll be something different, or a side thing, or a compilation of things we hadn’t finished.”
Saying he is keen not to be seen as an ageing rocker desperately trying to find a hit, Chris added: “Also, to make an album great as a band, it’s such a lot of wrangling with people and I want to give the others some of their life for themselves.
“I don’t want to, when we’re 60, be like, ‘Will, we need you. Come on! We can do better than this!’ ”
As I revealed in July, Coldplay will hold a ten-date residency at Wembley Stadium, after playing two concerts at Hull, next August.
All the dates are now sold out and Chris insists the group have never been more excited.
He gushed: “Because of getting older, because of Covid, because of everything going on in the world, because of the optimism that it gives us to see all different kinds of people gathering together, because of songs that arrive from nowhere, because we go at a slower pace. All these things mean that we love it.”
