Coldplay’s 10th album Moon Music is breaking records for more than one reason as they reach heights they haven’t in a decade.
Billboard announced the British band’s latest album has debuted at number one on the 200 album chart, becoming the band’s fifth US number one album.
Coldplay have achieved this feat more than any other UK solo act this century, but that’s not all.
The group – made up of vocalist and pianist Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer and percussionist Will Champion – have also become the first band to simultaneously top the US and UK album charts since 2016.
Moon Music has garnered ‘127,000 equivalent album units’, according to a press release, giving Coldplay their highest US first-week total since their 2015 release A Head Full Of Dreams. More than 106,000 of this total came from album sales alone.
It is their first Billboard 200 number one album since 2014’s Ghost Stories, featuring the singles Magic, A Sky Full Of Stars, True Love, and Ink.
The smash hit album landed at number one on the UK’s official album chart, where it outsold the rest of the Top 40 combined, with its 237,000 first-week sales becoming the highest by a group since One Direction in 2013.
Moon Music has also topped the official album charts in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.
Last week saw Coldplay become the first group ever to surpass 90 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
‘To achieve this success in the middle of a record-breaking stadium tour makes it all the more impressive,’ Coldplay’s manager Phil Harvey told Variety.
The achievement is all the more impressive considering its initial average reception with critics.
Pitchfork declared ‘[the] unpredictable quality control makes Coldplay frustrating to defend or dismiss’ while the Independent called it ‘suffocatingly banal’ in a one-star review.
And The Guardian offered three-stars, describing the album as ’empty, cloying optimism and too much ingratiating tosh’.
Nevertheless the people have spoken.
This milestone follows the announcement of UK dates for Coldplay’s massive Music of the Spheres Tour, leading fans to fume at Ticketmaster as they desperately tried to get tickets.
The Clocks hitmakers will perform at London’s Wembley Stadium next year on August 22, 23, 26, 27, 30, and 31, and September 3 and 4.
They also have gigs at Hull’s Craven Park Stadium on August 18 and 19, after performing in China, India, South Korea, and UAE.
Many found they couldn’t access the pre-sale and those that did still missed out on tickets, with Coldplay even adding extra dates.
Worst of all was the accessibility sale, with disabled fans furious over antiquated systems and lack of support when it comes to tickets.
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Despite their astronomical success, Martin has recently revealed when the band are set to retire – and it might not be that far away.
The 47-year-old musician said he only wants to release two more ‘proper albums’ before saying farewell to his bandmates.
‘We are only going to do 12 proper albums and that’s real. Yeah I promise,’ Chris said to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1.
‘Because less is more and for some of our critics, even less would be even more! It’s really important that we have that limit.’
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