Chris Martin
SeTi I---
SeTi I--- Adaptive
SeTi I--- Adaptive
Martin: "Everyone asks me about being so worried or thinking about existence as if I'm the only person who can't understand why a tree grows the way it does or why a person is in power when they're not that great. These are questions everyone has."
Martin: "Record sales don't really mean anything. For us, the pressure is imagining some 15-year-old kid in Cincinnati who buys our album and doesn't feel like he wasted his pocket money."
Martin: "I'm petrified of reincarnation because, you know, I like being me."
Martin: "You can sometimes get your own feelings across more strongly if you pretend that you're singing it from someone else's angle. But it's always from me. It's just a new way of framing it."
Martin: "I don't mind not being cool."
Martin: "Coldplay fans are the best in the world. If you like Coldplay then you're obviously very intelligent and good looking and all-around brilliant."
Martin: "You've got to express yourself in life, and it's better out than in. What you reveal, you heal."
Martin: "You can try to be catchy without being slick, poppy without being pop, and you can be uplifting without being pompous. Because we're sometimes playing quieter stuff, it's hard to sound like we're trying to change things, but we wanted to be a reaction against soulless rubbish."
Martin: "I do worry - a lot."
Martin: "I do an hour's yoga and go running every day. Then I see a picture of myself and I still look like a skinny, potbellied idiot - and I thought I had turned into this superhunk!"
Martin: "I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world."
Martin: "Even though the album is an endangered species, can we try and make a coherent and good one, even if it's like making a horse and cart at a Nascar conference?"
Martin: "What makes us a bit nervous is, in this instant age, to release something that might take more than one listen. Where everything is instantly judged on YouTube or something! It's a bit like releasing a horse and cart on a racetrack."
Martin: "Well, once we finish something, I can't really listen to it because all I hear are problems."
Martin: "Once a week, I don't eat for 24 or 30 hours. Your brain becomes very lucid about ideas. It also made me so grateful for food and for life, basically, and that's why a lot more joy is coming through our music, I think."
Martin: "I can't believe we've got away with becoming this huge band. And we still haven't done anything I think is that good yet."
Martin: "You have two years to make a record and do what you like to it; then, you have 10 minutes to do an interview that could mess it all up. It's the Crispian Mills Syndrome."
Martin: "I think if you're lucky enough to be in a band with your best friends, and you look at the world in the right way, than you understand that everything that's happening to you can be alchemized."
Martin: "I think that the fact that a relationship becomes public is a bit of a bummer. Because it can distract from the real reason why you're together, which is that you just like each other."
Martin: "I'm not a great dancer. I'm a great advertisement for freedom of expression. I don't care what you think. I'm having a great time."
Martin: "When I'm with my kids, I feel like that's really me. And when we're on stage, I feel that, too."
Martin: "India appeals to everybody. For me personally, I always felt like we would come here when we wanted to embrace all colours. I don't mean racially, but literally; just all the colours of the world."
Martin: "I know being on a major label is meant to be antiquated, but we're fine with it."
Martin: "Rihanna's voice is just delicious for your ear. Sinatra had the same thing; anything he sang sounded pleasing to most people."
Martin: "It's more egalitarian on the Internet - anyone can put anything up. But in terms of the money it takes to allow a band to get good, there's less of it to invest."
Martin: "Sometimes we have criticism that is very constructive."
Martin: "I give complete respect to any couple that stays together, however they do it, whether they do it by going on red carpets or going hiking together, you know, or keeping themselves really quiet and trying to stay out of all that press stuff."
Martin: "So I have probably 1,200 little bits of paper with notes, which when the Ambien really starts to kick in, don't really make much sense. Say what you like about prescription drugs, but they do help when you're sequencing a record."
Martin: "You know, it's possible for two humans to be in a relationship without there needing to be some public reason for that relationship."
Martin: "When you think of Rihanna's voice, you think of this whole, rich thing, solid like a tree trunk."
Martin: "Looking after your ears is unfortunately something you don't think about until there's a problem."
Martin: "Before our albums are released I feel like we still own it, that we have control over our music. But once it's out there in the world it's no longer ours."
Martin: "A band's only unique thing is its chemistry, especially if none of you are prodigious players or particularly handsome. The one thing you have is your uniqueness, so we hold on to that."
Matin: "We rely more on enthusiasm than actual skill. Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically and people will like it more."
Martin: "I have my moments - usually twice every album - when I basically lose it."
Martin: "I don't speak particularly well. That's one of the consequences of being extremely ugly."
Martin: "I know I am in a band that is famous, and my private life is famous. I get it, and it's fine. Even when I grew up in a village, people wanted to know who was going to the dance with whom, and I understand, but I think if I engage with it too much, it won't be that healthy."
Martin: "Some people misconstrue our band just to be a commercial venture."
Martin: "I've had tinnitus for about ten years, and since I started protecting my ears it hasn't got any worse - touch wood."
Martin: "What was I like as a kid? The same as I am now, just smaller with a higher voice."
Martin: "To me, India's always represented 'everything'; it represents 'all.' Everything is here. You can stay here forever, and you'll never feel like you've missed out on life."
Martin: "I personally really like getting a proper album with artwork and everything."
Martin: "This person loves tangerines, This person loves raspberries - and my son won't even look at berries. Isn't that amazing? And so I have to apply that to music; otherwise, I would always hide in a hole because of all the people that don't like Coldplay."
Martin: "I may not be as lyrically adept as Jay-Z and Morrissey, but at least I can sing what I feel."
Martin: "Celebrity culture has gone crazy, and I think the reason is that real news is just not bearable, and it also seems impossible to change anything."
Martin: "I've never been cool and I don't really care about being cool. It's just an awful lot of time and hair gel wasted."
Martin: "When you don't have food in your life, just for a day, it makes you realise you're lucky to have it the next day. So the day after fasting, the music that comes out will be very joyous."
Martin: "More idiots should just shut their mouths."
Martin: "There's stuff going on in the world right now, which you can't imagine why is this happening; it's crazy. I don't know what the answer is, but if you didn't have faith in the universe that somehow something great would arrive at the end, then we'd all give up, and that would be a waste of everyone's time."
Martin: "For people who write songs, it's a gift you're given. You become good at the craft, but you're given the gift."
Martin: "Economically, unfair trade will benefit nobody in the long run, as poorer countries will be bled totally dry and will become unable to produce anything."
Martin: "I'm not sure if I can whip, but I can nae nae with the best of them."
Martin: "I genuinely love Oasis, and I also genuinely love Beyoncé. My body gets the same pleasure. If you like different types of music, it's OK to say it."
Martin: "We want to make something that moves us when we hear it. Because after all the hype and awards and whatever, that's all music is."
Martin: "There comes a point where it doesn't matter how many zeroes are at the end of your bank account."
Martin: "I had a couple of years in the mid-2000s where it was really confusing to me. I was like, 'Why is our band sometimes a punch line?'"
Martin: "The goal is to try and make the perfect song. Which of course will never happen."
Martin: "Somebody rang me up the other day and said 'Yellow' was on a karaoke machine. That made me genuinely excited. It's got a nice beat."
Martin: "I'm saying One Direction are brilliant! And I'm not kidding. Because their songs are really good."
Martin: "I could be walking down the street one minute and get a handshake and then get spat on the next. I'm never sure whether to wear gloves or a helmet."
Martin: "Maybe it's because I'm English, but in terms of how people perceive us I only pick up on the negative side of it."
Martin: "I get more people approaching me about how good I was in 'Napoleon Dynamite' than being in Coldplay."