Coldplay: No More Tours Until They're Green-Friendly

Coldplay has a new album coming out this week, but unless you're planning on being in Jordan on Friday, don't look for the concert lineup to promote it. "We're not touring this album," frontman Chris Martin tells the BBC, adding the environmentally conscious reason: "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." Instead, the band will play two concerts in Amman on Friday to celebrate Everyday Life—one at sunrise and the other at sunset to honor the two sides of the album.

Martin concedes it will be hard to figure out "the flying side of things" for future "green" tours, but the band has started to brainstorm on other moves they can make, like banning single-use plastic at their shows and making the events solar-powered. Pitchfork notes research has shown that two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions emitted by the UK live music industry comes from audience travel to concerts. Martin tells the BBC that Coldplay will also play one concert at London's Natural History Museum on Nov. 25, with all proceeds going to an environmental charity. "We've done a lot of big tours at this point," Martin says. "How do we turn it around so it's [not] so much taking as giving?" (More Coldplay stories.)