Coldplay’s adored frontman Chris Martin’s recent split with Gwenyth Paltrow may have led to rejoicing women all over the world, but that also meant the singer-songwriter had plenty of inspiration for the band’s latest album, Ghost Stories. If heartbreak wasn’t inspiration enough, Martin also took a page out of some unexpected sources such as Katy Perry, Nirvana, and EDM.
Recently sitting down with Rolling Stone, Martin surprising admitted that whilst he was producing ‘Sky Full of Stars’, he was listening to a lot of Katy Perry. He was apparently fascinated by how the constant repetition of a single chord sequence could dominate an entire song, yet still remain entertaining due to vocal melodies.
“then I realized all these other people that have done that”, “Nirvana being a classic example — ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is the same chord sequence basically the whole time. There’s a simplicity to that. I needed to find a sequence that I could play for ages and ages and ages.”
Finding that perfect chord progression for ‘Sky Full of Stars’, Martin didn’t stop there as he aimed to add a sparkle of uplifting EDM vibes to the tune.
“some people turn their nose up at [it], but then you go and see an EDM thing and people are so together and having the best time”…”So I was like ‘Fuck it, I love that stuff, I want us to have a song that comes from that world.’”
In order to achieve this, he needed to rope in someone who could get the job done. Enter Swedish producer Avicii who worked extremely hard to create his own version. It was far from easy though, Martin explained –
“[It was] essentially playing Tetris for fucking hours”…”That’s why it took so long.”
The frontman did state that this song holds a great significance in his life.
“It’s the most important song we’ve ever had lyrically, because every time I sing it I’m like, ‘Yeah that’s how I want to live my life,’ 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. That would be terrible.”
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