My Coldplay.com

There are lights of all shapes and sizes and colors in Times Square, neon and fluorescent and hi-def digital, all constantly running in horizontal and vertical trajectories, all urgently blooming and disappearing — and all trying to sell you something. The whole effect is dizzying and loud and a bit surreal, kind of like being inside the world’s largest pinball machine. There are many adjectives that could be used to describe the everyday scene here; subtle is not one of them.

And yet, sitting in a chair overlooking all this, dressed in black cargo pants and a black button-up (the same outfit he would wear on “Saturday Night Live” three days later), is probably the most subtle frontman working today: Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and he looks strangely at ease in these surroundings. Actually, he looks largely catatonic — blue eyes glazed over, four days’ worth of stubble on his face, lips creased in an angular, weary smile — which belies his true purpose for being here: Chris Martin has something to say.

In less than three weeks, Martin and the rest of Coldplay — guitarist Jon Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion — will release X&Y, their third album of bombastic, sensitive-guy rock. Today is a press day, which means Martin will answer questions about the album, smile his way through inquiries into his personal life and raise his left hand innumerable times. On the back of that hand, he’s drawn two black horizontal lines and accentuated them with rings of blue and red tape on his index and middle fingers. It’s the iconography synonymous with Make Trade Fair, the international organization aimed at ending Third World debt through equal trade, which Martin has made his cause celeb.

Today Martin isn’t focused on selling records (those will sell themselves); he’s pitching poverty relief. And it’s no wonder he appears somewhat at home amidst all these light-up adverts: With his quiet mannerisms, good looks and superhuman politeness, Chris Martin is a killer salesman.

“Anyone who criticizes me for talking about fair trade is really a few pebbles short of a beach, because everybody should care about it, just like everyone should care about the environment: because we all live here,” he says with a smile.

Would you buy a car from this man? If you’re one of the 17 million people around the world who’ve bought his records, then the answer is probably “yes.” It’s not so much Martin’s pitch as it is his “kill ‘em with kindness” approach. It’s certainly worked with Coldplay’s music (which is nothing if not nice), and for the past two years — ever since Coldplay became a global sensation, ever since he married actress Gwyneth Paltrow, ever since he named his daughter Apple — Martin has been working to apply that method to his dual roles of superstar and international goodwill ambassador. Martin is no longer just a frontman. He’s the 21st century version of Young Bono: a firebrand speaking for those who have no voice, a musician seeking to right generations of wrongs, a mouthpiece, a pistol, a firecracker, a megaphone.

Except, unlike the upstart Bono of 25 years ago, Chris Martin isn’t any of those things. You won’t catch him writing protest songs or waving giant white flags during shows. His brand of activism seems limited to his left hand (and often his T-shirt). He’s not trying to ruffle feathers or rage against the machine. Basically, Martin is trying to change the world without pissing off a soul. And it just might work.

“I can understand skeptics who say, ‘Why is a singer talking about this?’ But we talk about fair trade because we’ve seen how it can affect people,” Martin says. “If we worked in a library and we’d seen it, we’d be talking about it too.”

And when you think about it, when was the last time you heard Bono compare himself to a librarian? It’s just something frontmen/humanitarians don’t do. It just doesn’t seem to add up. But then, neither does Chris Martin. And neither do Coldplay, for that matter.

When you get right down to it, there’s probably no reason Coldplay should be as famous as they are. Four lads from working-class backgrounds who met at the University of London, they entered an unsigned band competition on a whim, released a string of EPs and then — almost overnight — struck gold in the U.K. with the single “Yellow,” off their debut LP, Parachutes. Two years later, they released their second album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, and based on the strength of one single — “Clocks” — basically did what more prominent British acts like Oasis and Radiohead failed to do: They became superstars in America.

And this was all done by a band made up of a lead singer who primarily played piano (and skipped around the stage like a happy preschooler) and three other guys who almost no one could name. Their music is atmospheric, airy and — most of all — safe. While Noel and Liam Gallagher fought booze and each other, and Thom Yorke fought invisible corporate demons, Chris Martin fought, well, nothing in particular. His songs are about everything every person in the world has ever felt (fear, love, insecurity, etc.), yet he’s the one now standing on the precipice of rock immortality. He’s the one with the Oscar-winning wife. And he’s the one with the hotly anticipated album.

“There are things we could do to sell more records, and there are things we could do to sell less records. We stopped thinking about record sales and interviews and just tried to impress each other in a tiny rehearsal room,” Martin sighs. “Although secretly we’d be very happy if [X&Y] does well, really the fact that we get to play every day and get to do our dream job is good enough. If we started thinking any other way, it would be very dangerous.”

Dangerous or not, the specter of commercial failure haunted Coldplay throughout the making of X&Y. When news broke that the album — which the band had started making early last year — wasn’t going to be finished by Capitol Records’ promised delivery date (the first financial quarter of 2005), EMI (the megacorp that owns Capitol and a host of other labels) issued a profit warning to its shareholders. When Martin is asked about this, it’s literally the only time that he seems to lose interest in his left hand. In fact, he seems genuinely un-Martin-like — angry — about the whole thing.

“We find the whole thing ridiculous. We don’t really care about shareholders. How can we? We care about going in and playing for people who want to hear us, and we care about the 16-year-old in Nebraska who buys our album and his day is a little better for listening to it,” he says. “We don’t care about a little piece of paper that comes out every three months with some numbers on it.

“Most of corporate America and corporate Europe are all under the power of shareholders, these great, unidentifiable bodies of people, for whom most things are done. A lot of bad things are done to make these shareholders happy,” he adds. “Somehow you can do something and get rid of the responsibility of your action by saying it was for the shareholders, like mining in Alaska or something.”

As it turns out, EMI shareholders have very little to worry about. On X&Y, Coldplay deliver the album they were born to make: complex (but not too difficult), spacey, beautiful and overwhelmingly accessible. Though they cite both Kraftwerk and Brian Eno as major influences, this isn’t Autobahn or Music for Airports. It’s more like those albums’ little cousin … imitating, stealing toys and ultimately combining the best of both.

But the shareholders flap raises an interesting (and very 21st century) question: How can Martin — frontman for a band so closely tied to corporations, profit margins and IPOs — maintain his edge and remain a credible message board for free trade and global unity?

The same way he always has: unassumingly, politely and effortlessly. And with a whole lot of T-shirts.

Do a Google image search of “Chris Martin” and here’s a sampling of what you’ll find: Martin and Paltrow walking hand-in-hand, she in a black top and he in a gray “Stop Handgun Violence” tee. Martin and Paltrow wearing green headbands and matching “Make Trade Fair” T-shirts. A wide-eyed Martin wearing a ragged “Make Trade Fair” ringer. And there are thousands of images just like these. The point is, no superstar frontman/pitchman has ever said more while not actually speaking. You’ll never hear Martin firing off impassioned missives from the stage, never hear him dedicating songs to Mozambique or Mawai, never catch him dressed in a gold lamé suit and devil horns, speaking in a fake Scottish accent.

For our generation’s version of Bono, he’s absolutely nothing like Bono at all.

“The reason I always talk about U2 is because U2 are the top of Mount Everest for us. Talking about U2 is our way of motivating us to keep trying, because they are the peak,” he laughs, then pauses. “The thing about being a frontman is that people are always talking to you, but you’re often saying stupid things. The trouble with being in Coldplay is that everybody knows about it, and everybody inevitably asks you about it.”

And for a guy whose personal life has become front-and-center, for a guy who knows that all his lyrics are now going to be placed under the microscope, Martin makes no effort to spread his message through his songs, which makes absolutely no sense at all. But as with most things Chris Martin does, it also makes total sense.

“There has to come a point where you say, ‘F— it; I’m just going to sing what comes naturally. And if people think it’s about Dick Cheney, if they think it’s about Julia Roberts, that’s fine,” he says, running his left hand through his curly hair. “There came a point where we thought, ‘So what.’ Of course I know that anyone who’s interested is going to analyze the lyrics. Who cares? It’s fine.

“My lyrics — our lyrics — are a reflection of everything going on in our lives. Some of us have got married, some of us have lost people, I’ve had a daughter, and all that stuff gets poured in,” he continues. “There’s some confidence in there, but there’s also some insecurity. There’s happiness, but there’s also worry. It’s the sound of four humans who just struck it incredibly lucky.”

And that’s pretty much the way Chris Martin is. Think what you will — you’re probably correct. And even if you’re incorrect, that’s fine too. Rarely has a frontman so clearly resembled the band he fronts: polite, quiet and humble. Never has a celebrity mouthpiece for an international organization been so soft-spoken. There is nothing threatening about Coldplay. Chris Martin realizes that, sees the packed stadiums and hopes that he can simply end world poverty by being nice.

And who’s to say he can’t?

“All four of us feel like we have this incredible opportunity right now, to do so much — not just musically either,” he says. “But we’re also prepared for the fact that a lot of people think this is the moment to hate us. I personally think we’re going to be slaughtered with this record, but that could just be based on the time of day. But that’s always the way with us. We tend to take the rough and the smooth. X and Y, if you will.”

MTV.com 06/06/2006