After sixteen years, Coldplay is set to return to Budapest. The band is touring the world with their ninth album, released in 2021, and now they are coming to Hungary. But not just in any way. They have set the goal of keeping the carbon footprint of their tour as low as possible.
If their environmental considerations were not trendy enough, the band’s lead singer, Chris Martin, has also made headlines recently by announcing his engagement to Fifty Shades of Grey actress Dakota Johnson. Martin has been with Johnson since 2017, a year after his break-up with Gwyneth Paltrow.
The arrival of the band in Budapest is a major sensation, regardless of their lead singer’s personal life: their popularity is evident from the ticket sales. Due to high demand, they will perform not only on the originally announced date of 16 June but also on 18 and 19 June.
Coldplay embarked on their tour last March to promote their Music of the Spheres album, released on 15 October 2021. Since then, the band has sold over 7.5 million tickets, setting a record that no other artist has matched in the past two years. The current concert series will begin on 8 June in Athens, followed by Bucharest, and then Budapest.
The album Music of the Spheres, which lends its name to the tour, is a surprising creation in Coldplay’s repertoire: it is a concept album envisioning an imaginary planetary system, with track titles playing on the names of planets or satellites. This becomes clear when we learn that the inspiration for the album came, according to Chris Martin, from a scene in Star Wars, featuring the psychedelic presence of the band playing in the Mos Eisley cantina. The album also features unexpected musical collaborations.
Initially breaking through as a rock band, Coldplay was often compared to Radiohead by critics, acknowledging their innovative impact on rock music. Their success mirrored the success of rock music itself. Their debut album Parachutes (2000) features the rock track ‘Yellow’, which still resonates powerfully. Their second album A Rush of Blood to the Head further solidified their image as an alternative rock band. The song ‘In My Place’ from this album, which won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, remains an emotionally stirring journey, combining a bittersweet, melancholic mood with an uplifting, soaring effect that still creates a compelling mix.
The band aims to lead the entire pop industry in demonstrating that grandiose concert tours can be organized with an environmentally conscious mindset. To disseminate this approach, Coldplay has become the first in the world to release a sustainability report that outlines and summarizes its goals. This report reveals that, whenever possible, Coldplay’s concert stages are powered by renewable energy. To achieve this, solar panels are installed at the tour locations, and the trucks transporting the concert equipment are fuelled with biofuels.
Even more exciting is that the floors in front of the stage are equipped with tiles that react to the movement, dancing, and enthusiastic jumping of concertgoers, and can harness the resulting kinetic energy. Additionally, the LED wristbands worn by the energetically bouncing audience members are made from 100 per cent compostable, plant-based materials. They also ensure that the confetti released during the show is made entirely from biodegradable materials.
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