James Blake: “Coldplay bashing has got to stop – it’s not cool anymore!” 

James Blake has called for an end to people “bashing” Coldplay, saying that it’s “not cool anymore” to hate on the band.

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The artist made the comments during a new episode of the BBC Sounds podcast Sidetracked with Annie and Nick, when he shared his thoughts on the recent post from Chrissie Hynde – explaining what she does and doesn’t deem as “cool”.

Weighing in on what he thinks is “uncool”, he said that the negative comments about Coldplay leave him feeling frustrated.

“Coldplay bashing has got to stop. It’s not cool anymore! It’s not cool anymore to just be like ‘Coldplay’s not cool.’ Just fuck off,” he said. “There are so many amazing Coldplay songs. And Chris Martin is clearly a melodic genius.”

He continued: “[If] you don’t like the sound of their last few records, OK…? When you go and see them at Glastonbury, did you like a lot of the songs? Probably.

“Maybe the band changed the way they dressed? Are we not allowed to change the way we dress? Are we not allowed to bloody write songs in a different genre? Like, who cares, man? I get really a bit irate about this!”

Listen to the full episode here.

He also went on to celebrate Stevie Wonder as another artist who he takes inspiration from, alongside Chris Martin – recalling the time he met the music icon at a post-Oscars party.

“I couldn’t really talk. I just said thank you over and over again, even though he wasn’t saying anything nice to me really,” he told Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw. “I believe we talked about him playing on some music. [But] I was actually too afraid to get in touch. I didn’t in the end, because it was almost too overwhelming.

“He’s number one. It’s not like meeting any other musician for me. I cried afterwards. It was just totally overwhelming and kind of impossible!”

Blake’s comments praising Coldplay and sharing his love of the band’s songwriting ability comes after the two of them performed at Glastonbury last summer, and Coldplay delivered a massive headline set on the Pyramid Stage.

Blake’s partner, actor and activist Jameela Jamil, recently shared her anecdote of seeing the band perform their huge show at the event – sharing that a recent influx of bad news at the time led to her “ruining” the set for Benedict Cumberbatch.

It also comes after Chris Martin discussed the tendency to see negative comments online, saying that the band “deserve to take some shit” from haters now and again.

“It would be terrible if we lived in a society where everyone had to [like the same thing],” the frontman told Rolling Stone for its January 2025 cover interview.

“We’re a very, very easy, safe target. We’re not going to bite back. We are four white, middle-class men from England. We deserve to take some shit for what our people have done. There’s a reason we get to play all around the world, and part of it is not necessarily very healthy.”

This echoed the comments Martin made to NME last year in his only written interview for the release of new album ‘Moon Music’. “Right now, and since about 2008, if something lands in me as a song or as a good idea and it feels authentic, we’ll do it,” he told us. “It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks.

“It’s very liberating, and it was probably started by Brian Eno’s philosophy when he came in to rebuild us. Since then, if I find something true and exciting, then we’ll go for it. It has led us to some really weird and amazing places.”

Elsewhere, The Snuts‘ Jack Cochrane also hit out at people who dislike Coldplay in November, saying: “I think people who don’t like Coldplay are uncool. They’re one of those bands that everybody pretends they’re too cool to properly love, but the performance, the production and atmosphere, with everybody blasting their songs, was unforgettable.”

‘Moon Music’ was given a glowing four-star review by NME, and described by Rhian Daly as a record that looks to “pull Martin and those feeling like him back from the brink, one pop song at a time”.

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