It’s February 2016. Backstage at Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, Chris Martin is doing vocal exercises with a Bristolian woman in her seventies. Minutes from now, Coldplay will headline the Super Bowl 50 halftime show before an audience of 115 million.
Martin, his nerves humming like a live wire, has flown out his vocal coach from London just for this. Not, one imagines, that he needed the training. After all, he’s Chris Martin! It’s just that, when she got wind of who else was on the bill – Beyoncé! Bruno Mars! – her eyebrows shot up. “Well,” Martin remembers her saying, “You’d better have a lesson, then.”
