Breaking with current Guardian tradition, for once the paper is not full of attacks on the Labour government, coming at it from a position on the hard left, and instead today have gone after the popular beat combo outfit Coldplay. But not for their bland, generic, inoffensive, saccharin sweet music but because their lead singer, all round nice chap Chris Martin, was, to quote the Guardian headline to Elle Hunt’s article, “preaching love over Charlie Kirk’s death” at a recent gig in London. So, let’s look at Martin’s actual words:
He urged the crowd to “send love anywhere you wanna send it in the world”, adding: “You can send it to Charlie Kirk’s family. You can send it to anybody’s family. You can send it to people you disagree with but you send them love anyway.” Hunt then starts banging on about Martin’s actual words, dissecting them to suit her own argument, concluding: “It is this lack of a definitive statement, along with the barely there acknowledgment of how genuinely divisive these issues and events are, that rendered his warm-fuzzy sentiments hollow even by stadium-rock standards, like a Christian music concert with zero mention of God.”
Clearly, she is saying that Martin should have been more definitive and suggests that he should have called out Kirk for the hate-filled verbiage for which he was infamous. But here’s the thing. Martin, rather like Bono, has a tendency to preach from the pulpit of rock and roll, but with rather less substance. Martin genuinely means it when he says “send love anywhere you wanna send it in the world”. He doesn’t mean anything more than that. Like Coldplay’s music, it’s bland, generic, inoffensive, saccharin sweet. Me? I only wish there was a hell for Kirk to go to. Chris Martin is clearly a kinder, gentler and less angry person than me. The question for me is this: does anyone really really care and act upon what a pop singer says? By asking us to “send love anywhere“, does anyone really say, “Well, I hadn’t thought of doing that before?” Hunt then appears to lose it completely.
Coldplay, she asserts, are middle Britain. She continues: “I’m willing to bet that there will have been a far greater proportion of Tory – and no doubt Reform – voters at Wembley than the other gigs I’ve attended this year.” Bet on the basis of what, actually? She doesn’t say which other gigs she has attended, but isn’t it more likely that Oasis probably attracted a far greater proportion of Tory – and no doubt Reform voters – than dear old Coldplay? I am pretty sure that the Stone Island football chaps would find more in common with the faux, snarling aggression of Liam Gallagher than dear old Chris. But there I go, making the same assumption as Ms Hunt. In my small world, the people who I know who have seen Coldplay this year are the very last people who would line-up between the Fagash Fuhrer Nigel Farage.
We take this stuff far too seriously. I love a song with a good lyric but I love quite a few that are pure gobbledegook. And really, don’t most of us believe in peace and love, rather than war and hate? Ringo Starr has been saying so for longer than I care to remember. Even though he was a Beatle, not everyone was listening because actually why people go to see him is because of the music. It’s the same with Coldplay fans. If Chris Martin wants a little more love in the world, isn’t that rather good?
