A Head Full Of Dreams

Coldplay and Chris Martin Open Up for New Album
Coldplay’s Chris Martin talks about boosting creativity, dealing with confidence issues and studio album No. 7



The last time Coldplay released an album, 2014’s subdued “Ghost Stories,” the British rock band skipped the blockbuster concert tour that would normally come next. One reason: Singer Chris Martin had recently separated from his wife of 10 years, Gwyneth Paltrow, and wasn’t eager for the spotlight. Instead, Coldplay immediately started work on a follow-up album.

Now, Mr. Martin and his bandmates— Jonny Buckland (guitar), Guy Berryman (bass) and Will Champion (drums—are eager to open the throttle again. The group’s seventh studio album, “A Head Full of Dreams” (set for release Dec. 4) is ebullient, with lyrical references to soaring birds, beating hearts and gaining altitude.

The music, too, is more expansive, made to move the concert crowds the band will play for on tour next year. To break out of the predictable patterns of a four-piece rock band, the group recruited the producers known as Stargate. The Norwegian duo Tor Hermansen and Mikkel Eriksen are the architects of hits by pop stars such as Rihanna. Their collaboration yielded songs such as “Hymn for the Weekend,” with guest vocals by Beyoncé—perhaps the closest Coldplay will get to a throbbing dance track.

The album’s other guests nod to the wide embrace Mr. Martin was going for. A vocal by Ms. Paltrow is featured on “Everglow,” a ballad about a relationship’s enduring spark. Their two children and a dozen other friends and family members of the band sing in a “choir” heard on various songs, including one featuring the voice of actress, and current girlfriend, Annabelle Wallis.

With its first hit song, “Yellow,” Coldplay rocketed to success in 2000 just as traditional music sales were starting to collapse. As the last major rock act of the CD era—or the first of the digital era—Coldplay remains a bellwether band for the industry. Though massively popular, “we’ve never been cool,” says Mr. Martin, who published the lyrics to “Adventure of a Lifetime,” the band’s new single, in rainbow handwriting in the shape of a heart.

In an interview in Santa Monica, Calif., near his home and one of the studios where Coldplay recorded “A Head Full of Dreams,” the singer downplayed rumors that this was a final album and talked about the band’s new music and his strategies for boosting creativity and confidence. Edited from the transcript.

From “Yellow” on, Coldplay has always been a colorful band, and the artwork and imagery on the new album is especially vivid. What role does color play in your music?

I’ve been reading recently about synesthesia [in this case, associating music and other sensory information with colors], and I realize I probably have that a bit. I don’t think that’s unusual for songwriters. When I think of other people’s songs or albums, often a color comes to mind. The last album we made was supposed to be more silver and blue—two tones, quiet nighttime. With this one we’re trying to do our whole spectrum. The colors we’re missing within the band we tried to bring in with guests and other producers.

How have the band’s musical colors changed?

By not just sticking to the same ones: four English people on bass, drums, guitar and piano. About 10 years ago, a bunch of bands, us included, hadn’t yet embraced the recording technology of Pro Tools and all that. We were still using it as a disciplinarian. We had this computer system that can make us sound in tune and in time, so we made everything sound perfect. We all made records that we would now want to rerecord with a few more mistakes. Once we realized the computer wasn’t a headmaster, and just another instrument to be played with, it became freeing.

How did the band decide to work with Stargate?

We started by doing a song with them for Angelina Jolie’s movie “Unbroken.” Everything in Coldplay involves a run of permissions granted, so I was worried that the most musically conservative members of our band would [balk at] going with Rihanna’s producers. But the band said they’d love to. Tor and Mikkel did, too, but they wanted to hear demos because they don’t want to work with anything they don’t like. Which is really old school and bold. So I had to audition for them. They came over and I played a song for them on piano.

Can you give me an example of how that collaboration played out?

In the studio, the band would be in one room, playing it together live, trying to get a feel. We’d record something with [longtime producer] Rik Simpson and deliver it to Tor and Mikkel in the next room, and they’d mess around with it. Later, we’d go into the same room to see what was working. It’s a long but very wonderful process.

“Hymn for the Weekend” came out of that process as a very different kind of Coldplay song. How did it start?

The original kernel was that I was listening to Flo Rida or something, and I thought, it’s such a shame that Coldplay could never have one of those late-night club songs, like “Turn Down for What.” What would we call it if we had one? I thought I’d like to have a song called “Drinks on Me” where you sit on the side of a club and buy everyone drinks because you’re so f—ing cool. I was chuckling about that, when this melody came—“drinks on me, drinks on me”—then the rest of the song came out. I presented it to the rest of the band and they said, “We love this song, but there’s no way you can sing ‘drinks on me.’” So that changed into “drink from me” and the idea of having an angelic person in your life. Then that turned into asking Beyoncé to sing on it.

So in that case you were doing some musical role-playing. Do you have any other techniques for sparking songwriting ideas?

Free-form writing. Take a piece of paper and a pen, and for 12 minutes you write anything in your head unedited, uncensored, just to get it out of your system. You don’t read it back, and you destroy it right away. It’s really good to write after that, because some of those noisy thoughts aren’t in the way. You know what’s also good for creativity? Fasting. 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. You write a song on a Tuesday morning just after you’ve had some cornflakes and the world is perfect.

Are these things part of some bigger spiritual belief system for you?

To quote “This Is Spinal Tap,” David St. Hubbins said, “I was using bits and pieces of whatever Eastern philosophy would drift through my transom.” And that’s kind of what I’m doing. By the way, if you watch “Spinal Tap” after a few years of being in a band, you realize, “Oh God, we’re all that.” That movie is so perfectly observed, even 30 years on. And I think it’s responsible for so much quality control since then. Many things are vetoed in production meetings because they look a bit “Tap.”

When you end up with a wordless chorus, like at the end of “Adventure of a Lifetime” or the title track to the album, is it because you heard the melody that way in your head, or because no lyrics seemed to fit?

When I do that, it’s because I don’t want anything to get in the way of the mood of the music. The feeling is there without having to describe what it is. And we do that quite a lot. People say it’s a bit repetitive to say “oh oh oh oh oh oh,” but you can’t translate the melody into words.

And when there’s 20,000 people in the room singing along with you…

Then it becomes awesome and no one questions it. But I don’t think you can fool an audience into singing along. Otherwise we’d put those moments on every song.

You’re famously self-deprecating, but that’s different from lacking self-confidence in what you do, right?

The difference between the last two albums and the five that preceded them is a clear vision that we’ve seen through to the end without questioning it. A poem called “The Guest House” by [13th century poet and mystic] Rumi really changed my life. It’s about every feeling that you have being a gift. Self-doubt and depression as well as all the joyful feelings are all useful if you can harness them.

Is it easier to escape all that stuff when you’re in the studio with your bandmates?

No, it isn’t. Because they’re pretty ruthless, and the producers we work with don’t say they like something unless they do. So even for a song of ours to get released, it’s already been through eight levels of very sincere opinion. It’s a miracle that we get anything out. But when I’m in that group of people and we’re doing our thing, I feel that’s where I’m supposed to be. So if that’s self-confidence, then I have it.

Would you prefer it if people could experience Coldplay’s music without it being connected to your personal biography?

If I hear a song that I like, my first instinct is to find out about who made it. “Oh, these were the Sherman Brothers who wrote ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ and loads of songs for Disney.” That sort of thing. There’s a part of me that wishes no one knew anything about me, but it’s just not realistic. What’s even weirder is that some of the things people think they know about you aren’t true in the first place. They come from a misquote or hearsay or rumor. But I’m guilty of it, too. If I hear a new Rihanna song that I like, I want to know what Rihanna’s up to.

You’ve given people a lot to gossip about in the liner notes to the album, which lists all the nonband members on the album.

You mean children and ex-wives...

...and someone you’ve been linked to romantically.

Everyone who got asked to sing on our album has an important part in our lives. This is The Wall Street Journal, so I don’t want to get too hippie, but what I’m trying to learn in my life is the value of every human. Inclusiveness is the key thing, and it all comes from that “Guest House” poem. The “choir” started with my two kids coming in after school and recording. We recorded Blue Ivy Carter in New York when her mom Beyoncé was in the studio. It comes from learning about Greek tragedy, where the chorus chimes in at times. To me, when we use that sound, it’s to affirm what I’m saying. “We agree with you, Chris. Keep singing.”

In another context, would “consciously uncouple” [the phrase Mr. Martin and Ms. Paltrow used to describe their separation] be a good or bad song lyric?

I don’t know. I didn’t invent that phrase, but I love it. Everything’s a good lyric if you have the right beat.

When the announcement about the new album came out along with the new single, one tweet caught my eye. A guy wrote, “Coldplay are too easy to hate. I prefer hating something that’s a bit more challenging to hate, y’know?” How do you interpret the layers of sarcasm in that statement?

If you can give someone the pleasure of not liking you, maybe that’s as valid as the pleasure of liking you. Kind of a “Despicable Me” thing. Some people want to assert themselves by showing the things they don’t like. It’s a form of positioning yourself. We all do that. I get it. But I’m more focused on the people who do like what we do, and there’s a few of them. I like hanging out with those people. If you ever liked Coldplay, then we’re going to really deliver on our promise over the next year or so. It’s not guarded music. It’s about very open things and that might not resonate with some people. But I don’t want to obscure our music behind coolness or cynicism just to avoid criticisms. Because for some people it really connects, and I need it, too.

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