Review by Enzo Giordani
There have been a lot of Coldplay concerts, and a lot of words written about them, so my ability to add something original on this topic would be limited, even if I was a lot better at this than I am. At the very least I’m going to aim for ‘let’s avoid as many common tropes as we can’.
So… banned words include arena-rock, stadium-rock, anthem, wholesome, cheesy, feel-good, unpretentious, heartfelt, euphoric, sentimental, epic, accessible, escapism, uplifting, sing-along, infectious, crowd-pleasing, relatable and optimistic.
Which makes life extremely difficult because last night’s concert at Eden Park was all of those things.
At this point I’d like to pause and thank my sponsor – Theasaurus.com – for making this review possible.
It’s also necessary, while we’re paused, to hand out a major brick bat – to the weather gods. It felt a bit like they wanted to make the Londoners feel at home with some very English persistent dreary drizzle, and I applaud that sentiment. The only problem was the only people who got to perform in it were the opening acts from Zimbabwe (Shone), Iraq/Australia (Emmanuel Kelly) and Nigeria (Ayra Starr) – none of these places are known for their miserable weather, and they all performed admirably despite the strong likelihood they were in severe climate shock.
Then the rain cleared, the temperature rose and, after a beautiful warm Māori welcome, on came the main act from Blighty!
The 57,000-strong crowd went wild and we kicked straight off into it with audience-satisfier Higher Power as hundreds of giant balloons were released, bounced merrily around the stadium, and created an electric atmosphere as people balanced belting out choruses with avoiding getting belted in the head either with a high-speed balloon or by a stray hand from the row behind going in for a goalkeeper’s punch…
A few songs in, Chris Martin quipped that they had done 172 shows on the Music of the Spheres Tour before arriving in Tāmaki Makaurau. He joked that all that practice was necessary to satisfy our high standards.
I had to wonder to myself how on earth anyone could perform largely the same setlist 173 times without going mad.
He answered my question by dragging a couple out of the crowd and serenading them with the song they had requested (Up&Up) on a sign they had been holding up in the mosh pit.
There were other similarly touching moments later in the show when a series of individuals appeared on the big screen, one at a time, long enough for Martin compose a song about each one on the spot. And when I say compose, I mean composition in the sense it applies to me when I make up songs about my cats. Corny? Sure. But also quite lovely.
My favourite moments tended to come when Martin got on the upright piano and gave us tender renditions of songs like The Scientist and Fix You. And of course there are the ones that were always guaranteed to bring the house down like Viva La Vida and Yellow. For the latter, the plastic wristbands we had all been given on the way in glowed yellow and filled the stadium like a bowl full of… formaggio.
Another highlight was We Pray, performed in part with Pasifika group ‘This is Our Home’ who belted out a verse so soulful Martin made everyone stop so they could go back and sing it again.
All told, it was a highly enjoyable evening. You can’t argue with a band that can sell out a damn near 60,000 capacity stadium three times over in one city of only 1.7 million.
If you want grit, you can find it elsewhere. If you want an intellectual experience, you’ve come to the wrong place. But if you just want a bit of good clean fun, look no further than a Coldplay show.
Coldplay will play again at Eden Park Stadium on Friday 15th and Saturday 16th November; both shows are already sold out.
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