Coldplay is Doing Everything Right In Promoting ‘Everyday Life’

The ‘Everyday Life’ album cover (left) and a promotional photograph of the group (right) to celebrate their 8th full-length release.

You don’t sustain relevance and dominance of the music industry for two whole decades by simply following the norm and being the same. Coldplay is perhaps the most successful band of this century so far, and, is by far my favorite artist. Coldplay continues to challenge the norm through the music and promotion of their most recent album, Everyday Life.

In an era where social media is so important to generate conversation about something like an album, Coldplay started out by doing the opposite for their 8th studio album. In mid-October, billboards were erected around the world featuring the band in an old-time black-and-white photograph, featuring the date November 22, 1919. This indirectly allowed for Coldplay to cause a huge stir on social media, as fans who viewed the posters took to media such as Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, and others to share the images, trying to make meaning of it all. In the days leading up to any official announcement, I was constantly refreshing Reddit and Twitter to find anything linked to a possible release.

On October 19, the band confirmed the relevance of the billboards by posting the exact image on their social media sites in a 15-second teaser video (inserted above), with a snippet of the track “Sunrise.” However, in keeping with the old-time theme, Coldplay shared their track-list for Everyday Life in several print newspaper outlets a few days later, and also mailed out letters to certain fans about the album. These letters and advertisements confirmed the album’s release date of November 22, and that it was a double album in nature, with the two sides being “Sunrise” and “Sunset.” On October 22 (exactly one month prior to release), in a cool touch, Coldplay tweeted out the typewritten-letter as their official album announcement: 

The following week saw a more modern approach to advertising the album through social media. Using tweets and Instagram posts, Coldplay spread word about the release of their first (double) single, the tracks “Orphans” and “Arabesque.” The band also promoted themselves through a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live on November 2. Coldplay did a great job in using traditional, printed ways of carrying out a message, and intertwining it with the social approach that younger fans like me are more accustomed to. To me, this greatly shows their versatility and creativity.

They later announced via a humorous “mock” press conference video posted to their social media sites that they would partner with YouTube to stream two live performances in Jordan: one at sunrise, and one at sunset, coinciding with the two album sides. You could not go on YouTube in weeks leading up to release without at least seeing one advertisement for #ColdplayJordan.

In the weeks leading up to Jordan, bassist Guy Berryman gave an inside look on the process of making and rehearsing the album through posts on Instagram. I found these to be particularly interesting, as Berryman showed exactly what the band was working on musically and how they rehearsed for the Jordan shows. 

I watched the Jordan “Sunrise” performance (11:00 pm EST) and woke up early for the “Sunset” performance (9:00 am EST), with the live shows being my first full listen through the album, seemingly how the band intended for it to be. This was such an innovative way to use social media to reach millions of fans worldwide in real time to all celebrate the album’s release.

The way I can best describe the album is that it was, in a way, tied very well into their “old and new” promotion for it. There were many tracks that sounded like “old” and traditional Coldplay, while they also tried a lot of new things as well: stepping into the gospel, jazz, and even doo-wop genres with some of their tracks.

Coldplay is always changing and evolving, just like how social media is. Without a social audience, a band is basically obsolete. Coldplay consistently finds a way to engage their current fans while also pushing the right buttons to reach new fans who were unfamiliar with them before.

Make sure to set an hour aside to listen to Everyday Life, in particular the jazzy track “Arabesque” (which is the one that I CANNOT stop listening to) the joyous anthem “Orphans,” the angry “Trouble in Town,” the beautifully serene “Èkó,” and the heart-wrenching and powerful title track that concludes the album.

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