Glastonbury 2024: Why do I sometimes feel like I am the only person in Britain who loves Coldplay?

It was 2015. The occasion: the London launch of the first smartspeaker, which I was attending as a technology journalist. “Alexa,” said the nice middle-aged American demonstrating the gadget, “Play music by Coldplay.” A fraction of a second later, the haunting first few organ notes of “Fix You” were filling the conference room.

Even at 10 on a weekday meeting in a corporate setting, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Apart from “Fix You” being among my favourite ever songs, the technology to summon it up by voice was unlike any we’d ever seen.

But the choice of music didn’t seem to impress the too-cool-for-school young pair behind me. “Oh my god,” muttered the young man to the woman, “This is where we leave.” The two of them then stalked out of the event, shaking their heads in ostentatious disapproval.

I first came across Coldplay in 2005 when I started listening to their new X&Y album. It entranced me and still does – the soaring, uplifting anthemic peaks, the emotionally poignant dips, the exquisite tunes, the richness of the complex production. I could barely make out the lyrics, but I never can with pop music and never really care. I suspect I share that with most opera fans. 

But even if, as an older white man, I’m precisely the demographic the magnificent Chris Martin and the boys need like a hole in the head, I refuse to stop loving them. And I continue to have regular awkward Coldplay moments.

In Graydon Carter’s publication, Air Mail, where I’m the tech columnist, I wrote about an app last year, Vinylly, which matches potential romantic partners based on their musical taste.

The young social media team in New York, unaware of my Coldplay habit, tweeted about the review: “Imagine dating someone only to discover they like Coldplay.” For them, the definition of a bad date is someone who likes the band I love.

Only last week, a colleague I asked about Coldplay said, “They just really get on my nerves. I can’t explain it. I just can’t shake it, even when I like some of their songs.”

So, with another Coldplay appearance at Glastonbury on the Pyramid stage – their fifth headlining slot – and an album, Moon Music, coming out soon, I’ve been trying to analyse my own love for both the music and the band – and also understand Coldplay phobia.

For me, above all, it’s the positivity, the joyous splurge of colour at their extraordinary – and deeply emotional – shows, the lack of anger in their lyrics (despite being campaigners for various causes), and Martin’s willingness in the gentler numbers to sing from the heart about both torment and triumph.

I love how well-behaved their audience is and the nice, normal, unshowy, un-celeb-like nature of the band. I’m dazzled by the way the music develops from one album, one tour, to the next and how subtly but beguilingly different each new work is.

All of which sums up the very things that the haters hate. Nice, normal crowds brimming with positivity and heartfelt emotion are seen as snobby and emotionally constipated; dullards awash with mawkish sentimentality. Un-showy band members are plain boring.

Chris Martin, the haters will say, is the scion of a supremely middle-class family in Exeter – son of an accountant and a music teacher, the family business, a caravan dealership. All this makes for unexciting and unchallenging music. Apparently.

Where I hear sublime musical beauty, they see something prosaic and predictable. Banality is the worst crime for the sophisticate/snob; it’s apparently quite common for classical music aesthetes to hate Tchaikovsky for being too hackneyed.

For some, I’m sure, the band’s success alone, their millions of fans and multiple awards, is good enough reason to hate them.

 “Once a band gets huge, a weird thing happens,” says Bob Bradley, a musician turned music PR in the States. “Their original fans can start to resent them and feel abandoned. What was once a band to recommend to friends is now so popular that your best friend’s Dad is now a fan.”

Arts critic turned executive coach Dr Daniel Boscaljon says that Coldplay have not helped themselves. “Coldplay offered catchy and inoffensive music, it was this association with the latest corporate sound and, of course, Chris Martin’s public romance, which unfortunately dimmed earlier interest in their music.”

Ah yes, the Gwyneth Paltrow thing should not be underestimated in trying to understand why so many people have such an aversion to Coldplay. The marriage to Paltrow, ending in the “conscious uncoupling”, continues to attract sneers.

My answer to the question of Coldplay phobia?

Coldplay started cool, a student band at University College London. They did too well to remain cool. Like Dire Straits in the 1970s, success offends your early fans. Coldplay’s latest Glastonbury appearance will only make their haters’ eyes roll again, But the signs are that the band might have come full circle among some hipsters, who, granted, have also made fleeces cool again.

For many, but especially insecure young people like the silly pair who walked out of a meeting because Coldplay was playing, your musical taste is less about music than about trying to impress your peers by slavishly following the cool crowd.

If they allowed themselves to wallow in what I contend is the emotional depth of Coldplay, and if they didn’t care about showing off their supposed taste to their peers, they might discover not just the beauty of the music, but something more soulful about themselves.