International music festivals and concerts have been experiencing a renaissance since 2022, when The Script and Westlife were two of the few international acts to return to Indonesia after the easing of coronavirus restrictions.

This year has seen other foreign musicians and groups, including Blackpink and BTS’ Suga, playing to local crowds, but not everyone is following the latest hype over British rock band Coldplay.

Argia Adhidhanendra, founder of music management and promotion collective noisewhore, said the prevailing mood in Indonesia toward live performances was "fear of missing out" (FOMO). This helped explain why the concerts of acts like Blackpink and Coldplay had gone viral.

Argia also noticed that more concerts were held in Indonesia in the second quarter of this year alone compared to the last decade.

But why has the Coldplay concert sparked so much controversy among fans?

Not a fan

It's fine not to be a huge Coldplay fan. Alan McGee, the British entrepreneur who started Creation Records, home to bands like Oasis and My Bloody Valentine, once referred to Coldplay as "bed wetters" after hearing the band’s debut album, Parachutes.

Disliking the band does not stop with McGee. It reverberates through the United Kingdom and across the world, from critics calling it “safe” or “grandma-friendly” to sitcoms like Peep Show and Family Guy using it as a pop culture punching bag.

“They weren't really that inventive from the start,” said Anindito Ariwandono, a music enthusiast and a contributor to The Jakarta Post, noting that certain Coldplay tunes lacked subtlety because of the use of what he considered excessive gimmicks.

But he acknowledged that two of Coldplay’s early albums, Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head, left an indelible mark on him during junior high school. Anindito recalled he was casually introduced to the band behind “Fix You” because several classmates would regularly sing songs like “In My Place” and “Yellow”.

Audinanto Alif, a freelance writer and the bassist of local metal band Kultus, merely said Coldplay was “just not for me”.

“I think that Coldplay’s music is just basic pop in general,” Audinanto told the Post on May 18, and that listeners “instantly know the words [to the band’s songs] as soon as they’re played”.

Still, he could see how the British band stirred up so much excitement among Indonesians, though he also thought it could be “overhyped” and “just created an opportunity for ticket scalpers to seize”.

“There’s even [a scalper] who resells tickets for up to Rp 60 million on an e-commerce platform. There will also be some who simply fear they’ll miss out if they don’t go see the band, while others really only know popular songs like ‘Fix You’ or ‘Viva La Vida’,” he said.

Huge fan base

But it turns out that Indonesia is also home to one of Coldplay's largest fan bases with 1.6 million fans in Jakarta, making the city one of the band's most important streaming hubs. Mexico City is the band’s second largest streaming audience, with over 1.3 million listeners.

After playing for 26 years, the band has over 67 million listeners on Spotify alone.

Annisa Lestari, a public relations professional at a Jakarta start-up, said she had been a fan of the band ever since she was in junior high school, so she was excited about the band coming to Indonesia.

As far as she could remember, the first Coldplay music video she saw was for “Yellow”, and the lyrics to the band’s songs were a huge factor in making her into a huge fan.

She particularly liked “Paradise”, a song about a girl who has completely given up on her goals coming true in life, but everything she has imagined comes true in her dreams.

“It's universally relatable because sometimes the [reality] doesn't match with what we desire, and the only way to get past or accept that is to fantasize about it,” Annisa said.

Even among non-fans, the British rockers’ reputation for giving the best concerts is undeniable.

“Coldplay always has a way to stay relevant and engage with their fans, so it is already about more than just the music. Maybe not everyone who will be going to see them knows their music, but they must have been hooked by their branding and great reputation for their concerts,” said Audinanto.

“Coldplay is more than a band, it's a live experience,” he added.

Part of the band’s charm is its environmental activism, which is also why it is beloved by many across the globe.

According to Coldplay’s official website, the band is pushing for sustainable tours and has established three principles for its shows worldwide: Reduce for "reduce our consumption, recycle extensively, and cut our CO2 emissions by 50 percent"; Reinvent for "support new green technologies and develop sustainable, super-low carbon touring methods"; and Restore for “funding a portfolio of nature and technology research and actively removing additional CO2 [...] from the tour".

The band is currently launching kinetic dance floors as part of its Music of the Spheres world tour to harness the audience’s energy to power its shows.

Potential market

Ferry Dermawan, a promoter of Indonesia’s biannual Joyland Festival, said that after the COVID-19 pandemic subsided, more international artists were looking forward to tour the Asian market. This led to Joyland bringing the likes of French pop-rock band Phoenix and British rapper Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, who goes by her stage name M.I.A., to its Bali edition in March.

“There are many offers for the Asian market this year,” Ferry told the Post on May 17.

“Perhaps the bands’ management or their booking agencies only started looking at Asia this year since the majority of tours in 2021 were canceled,” he mused. “The pace picked up a bit in 2022, and then the peak was this year, when they just finished touring the US and Europe and started looking at Asia.”

Last November, Joyland’s Jakarta edition pulled in some 15,000 festivalgoers with an international lineup that included Thai singer-songwriter Phum Viphurit and Grammy-winning American singer and bassist Thundercat. Its Bali edition in March 2022 featured more international musicians to attract around 25,000 festivalgoers.

With such enthusiasm from Indonesian concertgoers, it is no wonder that major stadium acts like Coldplay could draw over 500,000 interested buyers to its ticket presale on May 17.

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