Since Coldplay introduced the “Jumbotron Song” into their setlist last year, the band has performed the improv-based bit at more than 80 shows. Night after night, it was mostly contained to the sphere of people who attended their concerts — at least until it became the center of a cheating scandal starring the CEO and HR exec from the technology company Astronomer. Regardless, frontman Chris Martin doesn’t intend to remove the segment from the setlist.
“We’ve been doing this a long time, and it is only recently that it became a… yeah,” Martin said during a recent concert in Hull, England, before trailing off, possibly not wanting to publicly rehash the drama from that night in Boston. “Life throws you lemons and you’ve got to make lemonade. So, we are going to keep doing it because we are going to meet some of you.”
One fan holding up a sign in the audience was at the Boston concert, where the Astronomer CEO and HR exec fueled suspicion when they ducked away from the camera. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Martin joked from the stage at the time. Reading the sign in Hull, which read “three times in three months,” Martin responded, “You were at that Boston gig! Well, OK, thank you for coming again after that debacle.”
At the band’s first concert after the apparent cheating video went viral, Martin made a point of warning the audience about what was coming, in case they were similarly unfamiliar. “How we’re gonna do that is we’re gonna use our cameras and put some of you on the big screen,” he said. “So please, if you haven’t done your makeup, do your makeup now.”
Trending Stories
Warnings have even started to show up in other artists’ concerts. “Do we have any lovebirds in the house? Don’t worry, we don’t got any of that Coldplay snidey fucking camera shit,” Liam Gallagher asked onstage during an Oasis gig in Manchester, England. “Doesn’t matter to us who you’re fucking mingling with, or tingling with, or fingering with. It’s none of our fucking business.”
It did matter to Astronomer, who accepted the resignation of CEO Andy Byron and recruited Martin’s ex-wife, Gwyneth Paltrow, as a temporary spokesperson to get the company’s image cleared up.
