The whole number thing has always been a bit funny to me.
In the early days, I would actually go out of my way to avoid letting people know I was traveling to see the same band so many times. I used to get a lot of flak for it from random internet strangers I did not even know. At one point, some people started calling me “The Biggest Coldplay Fan” as if it were an insult. In fact, for many years if you googled “Biggest Coldplay Fan” I would show up. But as I try to do with everything in life, I turned it into a positive. I have always maintained that we are all fans in our own unique way and no one is “bigger” or better than anyone else, but if people want to use that label, I will happily own it. I have been deeply dedicated to supporting these guys since the early 2000s. And the best part is, these guys have not changed at all. They are the same great human beings they were in the beginning.
Over the last few years, though, I have noticed a shift. In the same way nobody was taking selfies at concerts before social media blew up, now there seems to be a huge emphasis placed on keeping score and tracking show counts. I understand the impulse, but if it were purely about hitting a massive number for the sake of it, I could turn this into how I do everything else in my life, going all in with no compromise. I could dedicate every waking second to attending every single date on the calendar. Doing that, however, would burn out the magic faster than I care to admit.
I have been incredibly fortunate to see this band as many times as I have since 2001. But when you average it out across more than two decades, hitting 100 shows is not quite as crazy as it sounds at first glance. I just got super lucky to live in and travel through the places where they played the most, so the logistics managed to line up naturally over the years.
Rewatching a Favorite Movie
Back in Costa Rica at the start of the tour, Phil asked me where show number 100 was going to land. Up until that moment, I had not given it much thought. I had a vague estimate based on the dates I was planning to attend, but nothing set in stone.
Around that time, friends started checking in for updates, asking what grand celebration I had planned for the milestone. Truthfully, I never intended to make a big production out of it. To me, it is simple: if you find a movie you love, you just choose to rewatch it as many times as you want. I am just doing my own thing, completely separate from anyone else, and I am genuinely just happy to be in the building. In fact, there have been times on this tour where tickets are so hard to find, I’d be happy listening from outside, too.
Still, my friends kept planting ideas in my head that I ought to mark the occasion somehow.
As the schedule shook out, show 100 ended up landing in Chicago, which happens to be one of my absolute favorite cities to watch them play. In a strange way, Chicago feels like the London of America when it comes to the energy at their gigs. The atmosphere is completely unique, and unexpected moments always seem to happen there.
During the Mylo Xyloto tour in 2012, a fan held up a sign asking Chris to play Amsterdam. He gave it a brief try on night one before stopping, but then came back on night two and played the whole song. On the A Head Full of Dreams tour, Chicago delivered the most epic rainstorm I have ever experienced during a live concert. I have incredible memories of jumping and dancing in the pouring rain while venue security was frantically telling the band to wrap it up for safety, all while Chris pushed to keep playing as long as humanly possible for the crowd.
On top of all that, I have so many close non-Coldplay friends living in the city. I once was waiting inside a friend’s house before he got off work, and the second he walked through the front door, he took one look at me and said, “Oh, is Coldplay in town?”
Seeing Double in the Crowd
The absolute best part of show 100 was that so many of my friends flew in from all across the globe to be there.
My friends came up with the idea for everyone to wear t-shirts with my face on them, so everywhere I looked inside the venue, I kept seeing myself. Turning around and seeing a crowd of over 30 of my closest friends all wearing my face was hilariously surreal, even if it made me a little uncomfortable at times.
That shirt actually led to a couple of funny moments. At one point during the show, someone tossed one of the shirts onto the stage. Chris picked it up, looked at it completely bewildered, had no idea what to do with it, and tossed it right back. But even though he did not know what to make of it in the moment, a few people in Chris’ orbit ended up wanting one, so I actually had to bring a batch of shirts to the next show just to make those requests happen!
Then, after the performance wrapped up, everyone was crowding around trying to get a copy of the setlist. The crew had just run out right as my friend Macky was asking for one, and apologized and said they were out. But then that crew member spotted the shirt Macky was wearing, said, “one second,” and went out of her way to bring a setlist over specifically for him, which was hilarious.
Getting to celebrate that milestone surrounded by so many people I care about was the true highlight of the entire trip. There are a few other incredible memories from that entire week that I am keeping tucked away in my personal vault. One final surprise was literally three minutes after I landed back in Austin, I got a push notification that Coldplay tweeted. I went to check it, and it was a nice message from Phil, to me! A nice end to an unforgettable week.
