Hear Chris Martin and die

My old grandmother used to have a little saying: "You've got to eat a peck of dirt before you die." When I was little, I used to misinterpret this as meaning that before you were allowed to die, your cumulative intake of dirt had to add up to a peck across your lifetime.

I think of this as I hear Chris Martin insist he's written a song you have to listen to before you die, as I'm back to that confusion of my youth: does he mean that it's something you have to do to complete a life well-lived, or merely that listening to the song will kill you? I suspect the latter.

Martin seems aware that people think his band is a little boring:

"I think for a long time people felt like we were a band in black-and-white, and now we feel like because we have this incredible job, now we can do whatever we like and try all kinds of new things."

This would imply we should expect something that will challenge our very perceptions of what Coldplay is.

Or, on the other hand, that the record label has allowed them to have a full orchestra on two sweeping tracks this time round.

"In order for us to get excited about a new album, we have to have one song that we feel like everybody has to hear ... before we die, otherwise we'll be terribly depressed.

Well... that accounts for why they sound like a band on the point of a vodka-and-anadin cocktail the whole time, then.

"So luckily with this new record we're going to make, we have that one song… I can't tell you about it, but it's basically genius."

The burden of such self-doubt must be crippling for young Martin, don't you think?