Chris Martin has said Coldplay’s new album is influenced by real world events such as the Syrian refugee crisis.
The Brit Award-winning band revealed the tracklist for their upcoming double album, titled Everyday Life, on Wednesday using classified adverts in local newspapers.
The singer, 42, said the record, which comes after 2015’s A Head Full Of Dreams, is about “just being human” and was the band’s reaction to “the perceived negativity that’s everywhere”.
Speaking to radio DJ Annie Mac on Radio 1’s Future Sounds on Thursday, he urged listeners to walk in the shoes of “these kids who have to leave Syria” and those who grew up in the city of Baltimore, Maryland.
⏰ Tonight, 7.30pm BST#EverydayLife 🌙☀️ pic.twitter.com/lpegwURwTk
— Coldplay (@coldplay) October 24, 2019
He said: “The truth is there was something about our last tour that made me at peace with speaking openly and not minding if people disagree…
“This has been the first time we’ve felt like: ‘We’ve got to this place as a band so there’s really nothing to think about career-wise.’
“You can just speak completely freely and let all the colours of life come through.
“Some of it’s very personal, about real things in my life, and some of it’s about things that I see or we see, and some of it’s about trying to empathise about what other people are going through.
“It seems to me that one of the things that might help people have a better time is to put themselves in other people’s shoes, whether that’s these kids who have to leave Syria, or who grew up in Baltimore, or whatever it might be.
“Rather than judging from afar, maybe to think: ‘I wonder what it’s like to be there’.”
Martin, who was married to Gwyneth Paltrow for 13 years and divorced in 2016 following a process they called “conscious uncoupling”, has been vocal about the conflict in Syria.
In 2017, he voiced support for the charity War Child’s Enough is Enough campaign to end the conflict in the Middle Eastern country.
— Coldplay (@coldplay) October 19, 2019
He added: “It’s all about just being human.
“Every day is great and every day is terrible… It just feels kind of free. There’s so much life bursting out on the planet.
“(The album) is our reaction to the perceived negativity that’s everywhere. And there is a lot of trouble, but there’s also so much positivity and so much great life happening.
“So in a way, it’s just trying to make sense of things, saying what we feel and what we see.”
Since being formed in London in 1996, Coldplay have become one of the biggest bands in the world, selling more than 100 million albums.
Everyday Life, Coldplay’s eighth studio album, is due to be released on November 22.
The full interview will be broadcast on Radio 1’s Future Sounds show on Thursday from 7.30pm.