Why I don’t need to see Coldplay perform live to validate my bond with their music

The whole experience felt like some sadistic, digital lottery — where luck, not dedication, is the deciding factor. Scalpers, meanwhile, seemed to have won the day, with resale prices skyrocketing to absurd heights — some even touching Rs 7.78 lakh. I’ll admit, when I first saw those prices, my heart sank. Not just because I couldn’t afford them — although that’s a given — but because it felt like a betrayal, as though something deeply personal had been turned into a transaction. The ticket hunt became a cruel game of who could afford to shell out a small fortune for a fleeting moment of live euphoria.

It’s Coldplay’s first concert in India in eight years; they last performed at the ‘Global Citizen Festival’ in Mumbai in 2016 (which, it goes without saying, I had missed). Following the sell-out success of their 2024 European stadium shows, expectations are running high. The India leg promises to be a spectacle of music, light, pyrotechnics, and dream-like visuals that fans like yours truly have come to root for. Imagine hearing classics like Yellow, Clocks, Fix You, Viva La Vida, and newer hits like We Pray and Feels Like I’m Falling in Love (from their 10th studio album, Moon Music, that’s set for release on October 4, 2024) while surrounded by lasers, fireworks, and thousands of LED wristbands glowing in unison.

A soundtrack to my life

I stumbled upon Coldplay in the early noughties — the odd, liminal space between cassette tapes and CDs — when music was still a physical thing you could hold, rewind, and fast-forward through. They came into my life during long, introspective hours spent in the hostel room — late at night — when I’d borrow my room partner’s CD player, lying in bed, tethered to my headphones. Back then, Coldplay — an offspring of the Britpop revolution of the middle 1990s, hailed as ‘the new U2, the new R.E.M. and the new Radiohead’ — wasn’t the arena-filling juggernaut they are today. They were the band you’d discover on a mix CD from a friend. When I somehow managed to lay my hands on Parachutes (2000), their first studio album that won the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album, Chris Martin’s voice offered me solace — not grand promises — and has lived rent-free in my head ever since. I am a sucker for all the moody and melancholy rock songs from this period: Audioslave’s I Am The Highway comes to mind but there were scores of others by the likes of Linkin Park (One Step Closer, Crawling, Papercut, Somewhere I Belong, et al) and Evanescence (Bring Me to Life, Where Will You Go, etc), among many others.

Now, two decades later, Coldplay has become a global phenomenon, and here I am, ticketless, when they are set to rock Mumbai. I’d always imagined seeing Coldplay live would be a shared experience, a moment when I could be surrounded by strangers who felt the same connection to those notes and lyrics. But now, the idea of spending an obscene amount on a ticket feels… wrong, hollow. So, while it’s hard to stomach missing out on such a historic concert when you’ve been a fan for at least 20 years, at the same time, it doesn’t feel like a loss. Not quite. It’s easy to fall into the trap of disappointment, especially when you’ve built it up in your mind for years. But here’s the thing: it isn’t the end of the world. 

Not attending a Coldplay concert doesn’t undo all those days and nights spent with their music, lying in my room, the world receding (or expanding) as The Scientist or Shiver played on loop. It doesn’t negate the quiet hours when I’d close my eyes and feel the weight of Fix You seep into my bones, a song that, in its way, stitched together my feelings of being adrift. Music, after all, isn’t bound to the live experience. Yes, there’s something sui generis about being there, in the moment, with the crowd, feeling the beat pulse through your body. But the heart of it, the core of what makes Coldplay resonate with me, lives far outside the bounds of a concert venue. I realised, as I sat scrolling through those absurd ticket resale prices, that Coldplay had already given me something far more valuable than a live performance. They’ve given me a soundtrack to my life.

A private experience, a companion in solitude

In the early 2000s, music didn’t come at you through algorithms. You had to hunt for it. There was a thrill in discovery that’s hard to explain to people today. You didn’t know when you pressed play on a Coldplay track that it would seep into your life and grow roots. The first time I heard Yellow, I wasn’t thinking about it being an anthem for millions, or that it would someday be played in stadiums full of adoring fans. I was thinking about the unspoken moments in my own life, the relationships I’d failed to save, the times I’d felt too small or invisible. Coldplay was a private experience for me, a companion in solitude.

Now, Coldplay is anything but solitary. Their sound has ballooned into something grand and encompassing, a sort of universal balm for the world’s wounds, if you will. And that’s beautiful in its own right. But the truth is, I don’t need to see them live to validate my relationship with their music. I don’t need to spend exorbitant sums of money to stand in a crowded stadium and scream the lyrics to songs that have already been tattooed on my soul.

And maybe that’s where the modern obsession with having to be at every event, every concert, every festival has gone awry. We’ve become convinced that we have to participate in everything, that missing out on something means losing out on life itself.  The fear of missing out — FOMO — has become a cultural occurrence, something we joke about but still internalise deeply. It’s as if life only happens when we’re seen, photographed, or checked-in at some event. 

But some of my best moments with Coldplay have been completely unseen. No one was around when I sat in my room or on my balcony, watching the sunset with A Rush of Blood to the Head playing softly in the background. No one documented the long bus/metro rides when I’d stare out the window, letting Coldplay tracks fill the silence in my mind. And yet, those moments were real, and they mattered. More than any Instagram post of me singing along in a stadium ever could.

A bend in the road, not the end of the journey

What’s lost in the madness of sold-out tickets and scalping websites is the simple fact that music isn’t just an event. It’s a companion. Coldplay’s songs have walked beside me through some of the most formative moments of my life, and no amount of money can buy that. The sound of Chris Martin’s voice doesn’t need the echo of a stadium to reach me. It’s already there, embedded in the quiet corners of my memory.

And while I may not get to be there when the lights go down and the band takes the stage, I’ll still have Coldplay with me, in all the ways that matter. I’ll have them in the worn-out CDs, in the dusty headphones, in the playlists that have accompanied me through decades of change. I’ll have them in the lyrics that have taken on new meanings as I’ve grown older, the songs that once meant one thing but now mean something entirely different. So it’s only right that I do not trade the emotional richness of my history with Coldplay for an ephemeral experience that, while undoubtedly magical, is ultimately just one moment in a sea of many; I know I won’t be missing out on what truly matters.

As I sat with my laptop, watching tickets disappear and the prices skyrocket, it felt a bit like being ‘stuck in reverse,’ as Coldplay so hauntingly puts it in Fix You: “When you try your best, but you don't succeed / When you get what you want, but not what you need / When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep / Stuck in reverse…” That familiar line echoed in my mind, reminding me of all the times life felt like it was slipping out of my hands, moments when I was powerless to change the outcome. But just like those days, this too wasn’t a dead end. Being stuck doesn’t mean being stranded forever. The magic of Coldplay has always been about finding hope in the midst of disappointment, about the quiet resilience that carries you forward. Not being able to make it to a concert because you are not a hustler is just another bend in the road, not the end of the journey.

As hundreds and thousands of my fellow countrymen will be grooving to Coldplay in January, I won’t be sulking. Not a wee bit. Such is life. And sometimes it's okay to miss the boat. So, I'll be just fine, sitting at home (like so many others who would not be able to make it), listening perhaps to Don’t Panic or High Speed, remembering that the magic of Coldplay isn’t confined to a stadium. It’s in the music itself, in the way it connects us to the deepest parts of ourselves and to the people we once were. And for me, that’s enough.