Coldplay at Glastonbury review β Chris Martin takes tens of thousands on the adventure of a lifetime
Pyramid stage
Fireworks! Lasers! Confetti! More fireworks! Coldplay pull out every last stop for their record fifth headline performance, and youβd be churlish not to love it
It is, as Chris Martin points out, 25 years since Coldplayβs Glastonbury debut, a silver anniversary they commemorate tonight by unexpectedly dusting down an acoustic version of Sparks from their debut album Parachutes. Perhaps more pertinently, itβs the fifth time theyβve headlined the festival, and theyβve got the hang of it to such an extent that it increasingly feels like the job the quartet were put on earth to do.
Since their last appearance in 2016, theyβve completed a 180-degree turn from earnest stadium balladeers to purveyors of relentless, balls-out, more-is-more visual overload: their gigs are now effectively a 21st-century equivalent of U2βs Zoo TV shows, albeit without any of U2βs accompanying theorising about the media or the relationship between art and commerce.
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