James Blake Says Widespread Coldplay Hate ‘Has Got to Stop’

While Coldplay might claim they’ve made peace with being an “easy, safe target” for widespread disdain, James Blake has issued a public plea for music-lovers to stop criticizing the band just for the sake of it.

Blake made his public appeal in a recent discussion with Nick Grimshaw and Annie Macmanus on the BBC Sounds podcast Sidetracked with Annie and Nick. The focus of the conversation turned to a recent Instagram post from The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, in which she spoke about what she feels is and isn’t cool.

As Blake, Grimshaw, and Macmanus continued, they began to ruminate on the definition of cool, how its “hard to be a successful touring cool band,” and the recent comments from Brit Awards host Jack Whitehall, in which he referred to Coldplay as a “public school Nickelback.”

“Coldplay bashing has got to stop,” Blake chimed in. “It’s not cool anymore! It’s not cool anymore to just be like ‘Coldplay’s not cool.’ Just f–k off,” he said. “There are so many amazing Coldplay songs. And Chris Martin is clearly a melodic genius.”

“[If] you don’t like the sound of their last few records, OK. When you go and see them at Glastonbury, did you like a lot of the songs? Probably,” he continued. “Maybe the band changed the way they dressed? Are we not allowed to change the way we dress? Are we not allowed to bloody write songs in a different genre? Like, who cares, man? I get really a bit irate about this!”

While bands such as Coldplay and Nickelback have indeed become something of a lightning rod for public scorn over the years (the were themselves the subject of a 2023 documentary Hate to Love: Nickelback), Martin indicated to Rolling Stone in 2024 that he’s at peace with where the band find themselves in terms of public opinion and expectations.

“There’ve been times where we [were like], ‘Well, we should probably try and look a bit like this or talk a bit like that,’” Martin explained. “And now, it’s just like, ‘No.’ Just follow whatever’s being sent. And that’s a very liberating place to be. 

“If you want a puppet to sing a bit of a song, well, some people might not like this — my mum being one of them, for example. But my point is, that’s part of my journey to be like, ‘Well, I love you, and this is what we’re doing.’”

Despite any of the criticism that Coldplay attracts, their successes seem to tell a different story about what the public think of them. In January, their Indian debut broke the record for the largest-ever stadium shows of the 21st century. A two-night stint at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, Gujarat saw them perform for 111,581 fans at the first show and 111,989 fans per night at the second, totaling more than 223,000 fans across the two nights.

As of mid-December, Coldplay had sold more than 100,000 tickets on over half the stops of their Music of the Spheres World Tour and grossed a total of $1.14 billion.