Coldplay Welcome Friendly Aliens for ‘The Astronaut,’ Deliver Choir-Backed Rendition of ‘Fix You’ on ‘SNL’: Watch

Coldplay returned to Saturday Night Live as musical guest on Feb. 4 to deliver some recent tunes and revisit a fan-favorite classic.

The British band, led by charismatic frontman Chris Martin, opened with their 2022 single “The Astronaut,” a collaboration with BTS member Jin. The song opened with a starry background and colorful shooting lights, and later revealed the musicians donning friendly looking alien masks while performing the upbeat track.

For their second performance, Coldplay opted for a medley of their heartfelt songs “Human Heart,” from their 2021 Music of the Spheres album, and their 2005 classic “Fix You,” from X&Y. The band was joined during the emotional performance by Jacob Collier and choral ensemble Jason Max Ferdinand Singers.

This marked Coldplay’s seventh time performing as musical guest on the NBC sketch comedy show. The episode also featured first-time host and The Last of Us actor Pedro Pascal.

Coldplay is currently nearing completion of its 10th studio album, the follow-up to 2021’s Music of the Spheres, which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200.

“We’re finishing an album called Moon Music,” Martin recently told Toronto’s City News, “which is the second Music of the Spheres volume, but that won’t come out for a little bit.” The singer added that Coldplay “might” start playing some of the songs live “at some point this year.”

After launching the Music of the Spheres tour in Costa Rica last March, Coldplay recently added a series of new North American dates for later this year, slated to launch at Seattle’s Lumen Field on Sept. 20 and wind down on Oct. 1 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

Watch Coldplay’s SNL performances below. For those without cable, the broadcast will also stream on NBC’s streaming service, Peacock, which you can sign up for at the link here. Having a Peacock account also gives fans on demand access to previous SNL episodes as well.

Mitchell Peters

Billboard