Coldplay have been named Music Week’s Artist Of The Year for 2016.
Over the past 12 months, the band have won a BRIT Award, played to a combined audience of over 11.5 million at the Super Bowl and headlined Glastonbury for a record fourth time. Their tour in support of A Head Full Of Dreams, released in December 2015, grossed £108.4m from 29 shows in the first half of 2016.
Coldplay recently became the biggest band in the world on all-time streams when they passed five billion streams on Spotify. A Head Full Of Dreams has sold 976,205 copies to date, and is on course to become the group’s sixth million-selling record.
Speaking exclusively to Music Week, singer Chris Martin said: “We’re extremely grateful and very honoured and want to say thank you. I just feel very grateful. Really, the people I feel most happy for are Dave [Holmes} and Phil [Harvey], our managers, and Craig [Finley, production manager], because they slave away and I feel like something like this is a good thing for them to get so that we can all remind them how special they are.”
Drummer Will Champion added: “We're enjoying being in the band together so much still, which is wonderful. It's probably our greatest achievement that we're still happy and friends and beyond that we'll see what happens.
Harvey said: "We're absolutely delighted, it's amazing. It really does mean a lot actually. I remember when I was a college student coming down to London and popping into a newsagent when I was about 20. I bought myself a copy of Music Week to try and convince myself that I was part of the music industry and that we were going to make it, so it's really amazing to get this award now.”
Parlophone chairman Miles Leonard said: "We're very pleased you've chosen them, it’s great Music Week is giving them the support. It's been a stellar year for Coldplay in many ways. They still continue to deliver contemporary pop records and they're always looking to push themselves into areas that give them more colour and relevance. That they can still deliver an album with four or five big singles on is quite incredible."
Read full interviews with the band and their team in Music Week’s review of 2016 issue, out now.
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