No more new music from Coldplay. Sadly we’re still going to hear the old stuff.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at Chris Martin’s announcement on Jo Whiley’s Radio 2 show, er, tomorrow that Coldplay will stop recording music as a band from 2025. In the end, I neither laughed nor cried. Instead I just wondered why anyone would give a toss. But they do give a toss because Coldplay are a popular beat combo outfit who can fill a stadium anywhere in the world.

That said, Coldplay leave me cold. I know that Martin has a penchant for a decent hook and the band is very smart at plugging its music through a wide variety of partners in the business world. Once their most recent long player Music from the Spheres was released, the tunes were everywhere, especially on TV, used to sell other people’s products as well as their own. And their music is what has made them famous, something that baffles me.

I put Coldplay squarely in the box marked Adult Oriented Rock (AOR) where you will also find Muse, who sound like Radiohead meets Pinky and Perky (one for the kids there), and the eternally awful Queen. Essentially, sickly saccharin, safe, unthreatening music that is everything rock music shouldn’t be. Viva La Vida, Yellow through to 2021’s grim singalongaChris dross Higher Power, it’s perfect for an afternoon at Wembley Stadium with your grandparents. No one could possibly be offended.

Although they won’t be making new music, we also learn they’re still going to tour the old stuff, presumably to keep up the pension policy, and we’ll be – well, you’ll be – watching Chris and the other three blokes who no one really knows churning out yet another version of Yellow using their Zimmers.

I’m sure they’re really nice blokes and all that and if they’re your bag, good luck and all that. I wouldn’t go out to watch them if they were to play a gig in my front garden.