Mike Brest of the Washington Examiner reports on rock band Coldplay’s ingenious excuse for skipping out on touring.
Coldplay will not go on tour for their new album Everyday Life citing concerns over how the travel and shows would impact the environment.
Instead of going on tour, the band will play two gigs, both in Amman, Jordan, which will be broadcast live to a global audience on YouTube for free. The shows will be on Friday at sunrise and sunset, which is supposed to represent the two sides of the new album.
“We’re not touring this album,” frontman Chris Martin told BBC News. “We’re taking time over the next year or two, to work out how our tour can not only be sustainable [but] how can it be actively beneficial.”
“All of us have to work out the best way of doing our job,” Martin continued, adding that they wanted their future tours to “have a positive impact” on the environment. He also said that the band would be disappointed if their next tour was not carbon neutral, but added that “our dream is to have a show with no single use plastic, to have it largely solar powered.”
He also noted that the “hardest thing” to account for when it comes to an environmentally-friendly music tour is flying. Coldplay’s last tour, the A Head Full of Dreams Tour in 2016 and 2017, included 122 shows across five continents.
