Who did not shed a tear when the world’s most – allegedly – uncool rock superstar, Chris Martin, brought out his “hero” Michael J Fox for “Humankind” and “Fix You” during what can only be described as an epic Coldplay headliner performance at Glastonbury on Saturday night?
The wheelchair-bound Back to the Future superstar sat playing guitar along to his frontman friend’s infective optimism before a global audience – for the first time, the headliner was streamed around the world. That watching world chorused “I’m not crying, you’re crying”. It only makes the opprobrium, derision and animosity directed towards Coldplay all the more bizarre.
So, who decides who is cool and who isn’t? On X, there were plaudits for the performance, but there were also the predictable and puzzling haters: “Coldplay is for people who don’t like music” or an “enemy of music” tweets. That’s news to the astonishingly huge Glastonbury crowd, the watching millions in tears around the world, and my two daughters sending me Pyramid Stage videos from “one of the best gigs” of their lives.
Coldplay has always been derided. And yet, they are one of our few genuinely global superstar bands. What is our problem with mainstream success?
There is a long list of British world-beaters that we simply love to troll: Chris Martin, Ed Sheeran and Adele are inheritors of a tradition that stretches back to Queen, Genesis and Rod Stewart.
We also love to hate popular artists with a song or album that achieves earworm status: James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”, Dido’s “White Flag”, or Snow Patrol, Lily Allen and Keane. He’s not British, but consider the American synth rocker, Moby, and how everyone hated on him once every track from his album Play had been used as the soundtrack for various television commercials. Dido suffered a similar fate.
In our weird inversion of logic, the more that people like an artist’s music, the less cool they appear. The taste of the mainstream is sneered at by elitist music critics or armchair social media warriors alike. But what wasn’t cool about the eclectic, cosmopolitan and diverse group of other artists that Coldplay brought onto the stage with them? They ranged from the rapper Little Simz, the one-armed pianist Victoria Canal, the Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyana, and the African legend Fema Kuti. But Coldplay is dismissed as middle-aged white-man rock.
Even the Rolling Stones and Elton John have had “bland” accusations levelled at them. What critics really mean is that they have heard their music a lot. Nevertheless, they are both now global treasures. Sometimes, hearing that music too much can be turned to an artist’s advantage. Rick Astley is not as talented a songwriter by comparison with some of the artists above, but “Never Gonna Give You Up”, once hated like “You’re Beautiful”, has achieved the “so naff it’s brilliant” status that in our curious culture makes Astley cool again.
Despite global success, such opprobrium hurts. Martin has admitted this and the Canadian rockers, Nickelback, have even filmed a documentary about being the “most hated band in the world”. They are also the eleventh best-selling artists ever.
So, to be clear, if you come for Saint Paul McCartney, you come for all of us.