Jukebox: Here’s Why Coldplay Is Such A Big Deal

India can’t wait for the Coldplay concert in Mumbai. Here’s why the band is a super big deal.

Coldplay is finally going to perform in India. (Photo courtesy: Twitter/@FFwdTrends)

On 19 November, the popular British band, Coldplay, will perform at the MMRDA grounds in Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex as part of the Global Citizen concert.

After its breakthrough single Yellow, Coldplay became one of the biggest bands of the new millennium. With a mix of Brit-pop and rock, they landed an almost permanent position on music charts worldwide.

Coldplay’s band members Chris Martin (lead vocalist), Jon Buckland (lead guitarist), Guy Berryman (bassist) and Will Champion (drums/percussion) met in University College London (UCL) in September of 1996. At the time, Chris was considering forming a boy-band and naming it Pectoralaz.

By new year's day of 1998, the band was complete, with Guy Berryman on bass guitar and the multi-talented Will Champion learning to play drums. This band was called Starfish. When their friends, who were in a band named Coldplay, no longer wanted to use the name, Starfish officially rechristened itself to become Coldplay.

In April of 1998, Coldplay recorded a demo CD, which became so popular that the band decided to release the three songs as an EP (extended play) titled Safety. In the audience at one of their live shows in a London club was Simon Williams, the founder of an independent record label named Fierce Panda. Williams was so impressed by them that he signed them on, and together in 1999 they recorded Brothers and Sisters.

With this release, Coldplay not only made an impression on radio listeners and music critics, but also on Dan Keeling of Parlophone Records, who signed them for their first major-label effort – The Blue Room.

Shiver from their album Parachutes, reached number thirty-five on England's music charts in 1999, but it was Yellow that catapulted Coldplay into major stardom.

It climbed the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, and album sales in the US surpassed its numbers in the UK. In 2001 the album won two BRIT Awards - Best British Group and Best British Album. And the following year came the Grammy.

A Rush of Blood to the Head was released in the summer of 2002 to a chorus of positive reviews. Songs like Daylight, In My Place, and The Scientist splurged out over two weeks.

Coldplay earned a slew of awards for this one, including three MTV Video Music Awards in 2003, a Grammy Award for ‘best alternative music album’ in 2003 and, a Grammy for ‘record of the year’ for Clocks in 2004. The band also won again at the BRIT Awards for the ‘Best British Group’ and the ‘Best British Album’.

Speed of Sound marked Coldplay's first single from their long-awaited third album X&Y (2005). Topping charts around the world and selling more than eight million copies in its first year alone, Coldplay became at par with U2, they had arrived.

In 2011, Martin told BBC Radio about their new album: "It's about love, addiction, OCD, escape and working for someone you don't like." The singles Every Teardrop is a Waterfall and Paradise were released in 2011, and the album Mylo Xylto came topped the charts in over 24 countries soon after its release.

Work began on their sixth album Ghost Stories in late 2012. Avicii and Timbaland, were brought in, making the resulting album quite different from its predecessors. Ghost Stories debuted at number one throughout the world and its singles Magic and A Sky Full of Stars performed very well too, with the latter reaching the top ten in every major international market.

Soon after Ghost Stories, Coldplay recorded their seventh album in Los Angeles and London, collaborating with Noel Gallagher, Beyoncé, Tove Lo, etc. The joyous, disco-tinged lead single Adventure of a Lifetime arrived just a few weeks before the full-length A Head Full of Dreams was released that December. Hymn for the Weekend peaked at number six in the U.K. and 26 in the U.S., with Up & Up keeping the album on the charts through 2016.

On Coldplay's official web site, Martin explains the band's reason for being:

We were trying to say that there is an alternative, that you can try to be catchy without being slick, poppy, without being pop, and you can be uplifting without being pompous.... We wanted to be a reaction against soulless rubbish.

Coldplay has become a worldwide sensation – and Mumbai cannot wait to experience their magic on 19 November!