Coldplay kicks off unofficial start of summer on TODAY plaza with a hot concert
Summer officially begins this weekend, but you don’t have to wait until then to get into the groove of the season — not when we’ve got an act this hot on the plaza.
On Thursday morning, British hit-makers Coldplay took the TODAY stage as part of our Citi Music Series and delivered a crowd-pleasing performance. And they did it in front of an actual crowd!
It’s been a year and a half since Chris Martin, Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman and Will Champion last played in front of a jam-packed live audience, so the nearly 350 fully vaccinated fans who greeted them marked a welcome return to the way things used to be for the rockers.
And according to frontman Martin, who’s been belting it out to full houses for decades, it also marked something unusual for him — nervousness.
Just before launching into the music, he confessed, “I feel nervous,” joking, “I haven’t seen a real human person for about four years.”
But the 44-year-old noted that it was simply a case of nervous excitement. “This is going to be strange but wonderful,” he said.
He was certainly right about that last part. When the quartet kicked things off, they did so with a song that loyal listeners know well — their 2002 Grammy-winning hit, “Clocks,” — and the crowd went wild.
“We forget that that’s the main part of our band really, is people,” Martin said after the first part of their set. “We’ve been missing that whole half of our existence.”
We know just what he’s talking about — after all, this was also the first time in 477 days TODAY has had a crowd packed into the plaza.
This fully vaccinated crowd is ready for @coldplay on our plaza! #ColdplayTODAY @Citibank pic.twitter.com/N9JIDJHYgq
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 17, 2021
The band got back to business and took the stage a second time to perform their latest single, “Higher Power,” which Martin referred to as sort of “the doorway into” the new music they’ve worked on over the past year.
And even though that was supposed to be their final song for the morning, when the audience chanted “one more song” over and over again, the band obliged.
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See more from Coldplay when they perform at the 2021 iHeartRadio Music Festival in September. And if you want to see more live music on TODAY, just join us again on Friday, June 25, for a performance from H.E.R.
