A Head Full of Dreams Tour

The A Head Full of Dreams Tour^[1] is the seventh concert tour currently being undertaken by British alternative rock band Coldplay, launched in support of their namesake seventh studio album A Head Full of Dreams. Marking the band's return to large-scale venues, after the low-key Ghost Stories Tour, the tour will visit stadiums and arenas across three continents, with a total of 60 shows penned. The A Head Full of Dreams Tour boasts extensive laser light and pyrotechnic visuals similar to the Mylo Xyloto Tour, and also sees a reappearance of the Xylobands as a central part of the show's visual design. The tour has so far confirmed to be comprising three legs, with a total of 60 shows across Latin America, where they will perform for the first time since the Viva la Vida Tour, Europe, and North America, where they will embark on the very first stadium tour of the United States. The first show of the tour was held at the Estadio Ciudad de La Plata in La Plata, Argentina, on 31 March 2016.

Promotion

In November 2015, Coldplay announced the Latin American and European legs of the "A Head Full of Dreams Tour" through their official website, with 28 stadium shows confirmed across 14 countries in Europe and Latin America the next year.^[2] On 7 December 2015, a fourth and final date at Wembley Stadium, on Wed, 15 June 2016 was announced by the band.^[3] The following day, while being interviewed on The Late Late Show with James Corden, the band announced that the tour would also visit Asia and North America.^[4]

On 7 April 2016, Coldplay announced 12 new arena dates in the United States.^[5] On 29 May 2016, the band will play a homecoming gig in Exeter in England as part of BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend.^{[6] [7]} They have also been announced as the first headliners at Glastonbury 2016, performing on Sunday 26th June. This will be the fourth time they've headlined the festival and sets a record for the most number of times a headliner has played.^[8] It was also announced that this would be their only festival performance in 2016. However, two more festivals are now on their tour agenda. While nothing has been announced nor confirmed as of yet, Coldplay has expressed an interest to visit less-visited countries during concert tours, such as India and a large amount of Asia, as well as Africa. No dates have been set currently.^[9] Further tour dates will be announced after the release of dates of Leg 2 in Europe. On 6 October 2016, it has been confirmed on Twitter that they will visit the United States again and Canada in the Summer of 2017. On 15 November 2016, the band posted a teaser on Facebook for an Asian tour in 2017 that would visit Singapore, Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.^[10]

Opening acts

Lianne La Havas (left) is following Coldplay for the Latin American and European legs of the tour as its main supporting act, while Alessia Cara (right) will serve as main support during the North American leg.

For each of the main tour dates, two supporting acts, the first billed as the "opener", and the second as the "main support", performed before the concert. British folk and soul singer-songwriter Lianne La Havas is serving as the tour's main supporting act for all the shows during the Latin America leg and a majority of the European leg of the tour. Her appearances on the tour follow her own 10-month tour in support of her July 2015-released album Blood, which had ended two weeks before the start of the A Head Full of Dreams Tour.^[11] It marks the first stadium shows of Havas' career, and her first performances in Latin America.^[12][13] The opening acts during the Latin America leg featured local talent, including Argentinian singer and plastic artist Hana Ciliberti, and Mexican pop rock artist Ximena Sariñana, who will perform at the shows in Mexico City.^[14]

Canadian R&B and pop artist Alessia Cara will also perform as a supporting act on the A Head Full of Dreams Tour, serving as the opener on a majority of the shows during the European leg and as the main support during the North American leg.^[15] Cara, who will be turning 20 years old during the tour, had launched into mainstream success in 2015 with "Here",^[16][17] and had been performing her first concert tour in the months trailing the A Head Full of Dreams Tour, in support for her debut studio album Know-It-All.^[18] Cara, however, will skip three dates on the tour. Swiss artist Lea Lu will occupy the opening slot during the 11 June show in Zurich, Switzerland,^[19] while British rock band Reef will perform during the tour's final two London shows.^[20] In Lieu of Lianne La Havas' absence during the 11 June show in Zurich and the 3 July show in Stockholm, Sweden, British recording artists Foxes and Birdy will serve as main support respectively.^[21]

Setlist

Similar to the Mylo Xyloto Tour, the A Head Full of Dreams Tour is typically split into five parts; an introduction on the main "A-stage", a performance on the "B-stage", a second set on the A-stage, a set on the outward "C-stage", and finally an encore on the A-stage. Songs played on the A-stage are accompanied by the show's full laser light and pyrotechnic visuals, while performances on the B-stage are not accompanied by such, and songs played on the C-stage are strictly acoustic performances.

Chris Martin on stage at Manchester's Etihad Stadium on 4 June 2016

Shows typically feature over 20 songs on the setlist, many of which played differently from the recorded versions of the songs, usually combined with intros and outros from other tracks. For example, "Paradise", which closes the opening set of the show, is played with a remix of the song by Tiësto as an outro, while "Fix You" is played with the instrumental background from "Midnight". A majority of the songs played during the tour come from the namesake album A Head Full of Dreams, and from the band's previous studio album, Ghost Stories, though songs from the band's earlier discography, such as Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head are routinely played and shuffled across the setlist between shows. Frontman Chris Martin expressed satisfaction with the setlist, stating that the band were "enjoying playing really old songs", and that the tour "will finally have a setlist where we feel good about it from start to finish."^[23]

A view of the stage at Wembley Stadium, London, during one of the four sold out concerts.

Apart from the band's own songs, covers of songs by other artists were also performed, with "Heroes" by David Bowie being a staple on the setlist, during the middle of the second A-stage set. The cover is a tribute to the late Bowie, whose death in January 2016 had been massively publicized by both the media and music fans alike. According to Martin, he and Bowie were good friends, claiming that Bowie even had assigned the nickname of "Sticky Martinez" to him.^[24] The relationship between the band and Bowie musically, however, was not as profound; Bowie had earlier rejected a collaboration for Lhuna, a charity single released by the band in 2008 featuring Australian singer-songwritter Kylie Minogue, after deeming the song was simply "not one of [their] best".^[25] Prior to the start of the tour, Martin also took to covering Bowie's songs, such as "Life on Mars?" on The Howard Stern Show and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in the weeks following Bowie's death.^[26][27] The band also occasionally plays "'Til Kingdom Come"/"Ring of Fire", a combination between the X&Y song and the classic Johnny Cash song, which the band had initially conceived for the Twisted Logic Tour and also appeared in the setlist during the Viva la Vida Tour and Mylo Xyloto Tour. Occasionally, impromptu moments, usually during "A Sky Full of Stars" may also lead to an additional song being performed, as was the case during the band's 5 April performance at the Estadio Nacional de Lima in Peru, where Chris Martin sang "Happy Birthday to You" for his son Moses.^[28]

Another staple of the setlist is a segment of the show known as the "Fan Dedication Song", where a song is requested by fans attending particular concerts on the tour, through social media service Instagram, for the band to play at the end of their C-stage set.^[29] The segment was described by Martin as being similar to a photo booth, stating, "we'd ask people to give us a reason why they want us to play that song so there is a purpose behind why we play it."^[23][30]

Setlist examples

Reception

Tickets for the first two legs were put on sale on Friday 27 November 2015 (which was also Black Friday). Their two Wembley Stadium dates quickly sold out, prompting a third, and later a fourth, to be added.^[33] In addition to London dates being popular, shows were added in Mexico City, La Plata, Barcelona, Manchester, Zürich, Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

Tour dates

The tour grossed $137.2 million in the first half of 2016 from 29 shows. ^[45]

References

Notes

Citations

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to A Head Full of Dreams Tour.

• Coldplay official website