'You just have to follow your heart.' How Coldplay's Chris Martin learned to trust himself

Chris Martin doesn't worry much about how other people might respond to his ideas.

If he's thinking he might like to do a song with BTS or bring in Max Martin, the Swedish producer responsible for massive pop hits by the likes of Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, NSYNC and Katy Perry, to produce a Coldplay album, he just does it.

"Maybe on our third album, I think we were trying to stay within the realms of what people might have thought," he says, referring to the triple-platinum "X&Y," their first release to top the US charts. "But we sort of (messed) that up."

There's just so much opinion to sift through, especially now, there's no real point in worrying what other people have to say about what you believe that you should do.

"It's almost like the more opinions that there are, the more you just have to follow your heart," he says. 

"Some people will like it. And some people really won't. Most people in the world won't have any idea that it's out at all. And that's OK. It's a big and busy and noisy world."

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Coldplay's collaboration with producer Max Martin

Martin is speaking by Zoom in advance of Coldplay's show at State Farm Stadium in support of last year's "Music of the Spheres," their first collaboration with Max Martin.

"We've always wanted to work with him and have been heading towards each other for a while," the singer says.

"And in the first few weeks of working with him, it just felt like there's a sound that we can get that we've never been able to get before and he's never done before either. Which is somehow a combination of what we've both been up to for a while."

It was a bit like having a new bandmate in the room who happens to be really good with synths and making things sound crisp and fresh and "a little more poppy in some ways," Martin says.

He also served as a song doctor. 

"I'd play him something and he would just improve it," Martin says. "Very easily."

Another impact working with the hit producer had on how the album turned out is that Martin really wanted to impress him and worked even harder on the music with that goal in mind.

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"When you've been around for a while, it's an amazing thing to bring someone in of whom we're all slightly in awe," Martin said. "That can be a new artist, someone with a different skill set or, in Max's case, just someone who's better and more successful. So we're like, 'OK, whatever you say.'"

That brought "a sort of youthfulness to the proceedings," Martin says, "because you feel like you're 19 and there's a teacher in the room."

He felt the same way when they worked with Brian Eno on 2008's "Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends" and Stargate on 2015's "A Head Full of Dreams." 

"We deliberately try and put ourselves in that situation where we feel slightly pupil-esque," Martin says. 

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There's an extent to which this latest album feels a bit like the pendulum swinging back from the experimental alt-rock direction on "Everyday Life," which Martin says was part of the idea. 

"It's just following what feels good at that time and feels natural," Martin says. 

"And my natural inclination is 'Oh, we just did something really kind of dusty and small. Now I want to hear lots of synths.'"

It's a progression Martin feels will make more sense after the next three albums.

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"Somehow, I know our full discography story," Martin says. 

"It finishes after 12 records. So I have much less of a sense of panic about the changing directions because it all feels very natural to me. Sometimes we'll do an album and a certain group of people will be less happy or a certain group will be more happy. And I sort of feel like it's all gonna be OK once it's all said and done."

He's felt that way about Coldplay's catalog ending at 12 albums "for several years now," Martin says. 

"It's just what feels right. That's just what I get told by the powers that be. Wherever the songwriting gods are."

Working with BTS, Selena Gomez and more

In the meantime, "Music of the Spheres" produced a huge hit single in "My Universe," the BTS collaboration that became their first chart-topping entry on the Billboard Hot 100 since 2008's "Viva La Vida." 

"Someone had mentioned the idea of us doing a song for them, and I just thought that was a stupid idea," Martin says.

"Because I had no idea who they were. This was a few years ago. So then I started reading about them and listening. And I was like, 'Oh, I love this. This is cool.' So that idea was just percolating. And then one day, the right song just arrived."

Rather than just give the song to BTS, though, Martin wanted to record it with them. 

"Because that's a weird idea," he says. "And sometimes the weirdness or originality of a collaboration is the thing that makes it exciting. Especially if you like the song."

Selena Gomez, We Are King and Jacob Collier also put in guest appearances on "Music of the Spheres." 

"Youth is a big thing," Martin says. And he'd been wanting to collaborate with Gomez for a while now. 

"I heard a song of hers years ago called 'Good for You,'" he says, referring to the singer's Top 5 single from 2015. "I was like, 'Her voice just melts me. Maybe one day, there'll be a song that we could do together.'"

Much of the album was created in the midst of a global pandemic.

Martin calls it "a humbling time" that served to remind him that there's larger things happening in this world than the record he was making.

"I think all humans, we have our little tracks that we go on in our life," Martin says. 

"We're aware of the outside world, of course, especially if you tour the world. But even that is kind of blinkered, at times, because we're going from a stadium to a hotel. There's still a limited amount of the world that you can really engage with."

The pandemic reminded him of what he calls the "one place-ness" of Earth and humanity — "that your own life is just part of this bigger tapestry within which everything affects everything else," Martin says.

"You can't think of your life as more or less important than anyone else's, because it's all intertwined. I found that humbling and motivating."

When the prospect of touring came back, Martin says, he was "10 times more grateful" for the opportunity. 

"Because it was at risk, and still is at risk," he says. "You realize everything is at risk, and everything is fragile and connected. You've got to be so grateful for good things while they're happening."

Touring in 2022 is a difference experience, obviously, than it was prior to the shutdown.

"It's way more expensive to do everything and way more challenging health-wise," Martin says. "People get sick. And during the pandemic, a lot of businesses that were around touring folded, so it's hard to find this bit of staging or that thing."

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On the flip side, there's an energy within the concert that's "just crazy good," he says.

"Because everyone's so happy to be there. Most of all us. Any shred of complacency we might have had is long gone. And it's just been replaced with a real feeling of gratitude and joy."

The tour has been designed to be as sustainable with a wide variety of innovative green elements, from a kinetic dancefloor to electricity-generating bicycles that fans can pedal during the performance to actively charge batteries for the show.

The whole concert is run on sustainable battery energy, using recycled fuel and reclaimed cooking oil.

The tour is also donating part of its proceeds to environmental organizations, from One Tree Planted to the Ocean Cleanup and ClientEarth, a group of lawyers who work on behalf of the environment.

"The ultimate goal would be to do a tour that somehow generates positive climate energy," Martin says. "That's a way off. But bits of the show can do that already. So the concert itself is pretty clean. The bit where we still have a way to go is on transport -- our transport and audience transport."

Coldplay

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, May 12.

Where: State Farm Stadium, 1 Cardinals Way, Glendale.

Admission: Resale ticket prices vary.

Details: 800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com.

Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley.

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