Seven-time Grammy-winner Chris Martin knows a thing or two about writing hit songs.
Yet even the Coldplay frontman has probably never faced a challenge like the one posed to him by the listeners of BBC Radio 1 on Tuesday morning.
Appearing on the Greg James Breakfast Show, Martin — who recently celebrated girlfriend Dakota Johnson’s 30th birthday alongside ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow — agreed to create songs off the cuff in response to a series of humorous “sad morning stories” phoned in by the show’s listeners.
First up: a student called Beth who revealed that she once rolled out of bed for her lifeguard job at 4 a.m., then staggered to work — only to realize she was a week early!
"That's a luxury problem" ????
— BBC Radio 1 (@BBCR1) December 17, 2019
Chris Martin from @Coldplay improvised songs from Radio 1 listeners' Bleak Mornings for @GregJames ????
Watch the whole thing here ???? https://t.co/jgH2UrHJdB pic.twitter.com/qcafCRiUMV
“I woke up at 4 a.m. for nothing!” said Beth, who also missed her college lecture to speak to Martin.
“That is a bad, sad story,” replied Martin before taking to the keyboard and singing “At the time when most farmers, are still in their pajamas, my alarm went off to get me up.
“I wasn’t shirking, I was thinking about working, as I poured my coffee straight into my coffee cup.
“I wasn’t going to school. I wasn’t going somewhere cool. I was going to my local pool. That’s what I did.”
If you missed Chris turning @BBCR1 listeners' sad stories into songs on @gregjames' show this morning, you can catch up on the full thing below. A?????? https://t.co/B9GMyfidQ8
— Coldplay?????? (@coldplay) December 17, 2019
He later added the chorus “I’m early for work, I’m early for work. I feel such a berk because I’m early for work.
“Oh, I’m early for work, yeah, I’m early for work, I must be some kind of j-j-j-j-jerk.”
“That’s amazing,” said Beth afterward. “It makes being 20-minutes later for my lecture worthwhile!”
Next up came kindergarten manager Mark, who talked about the horror of waking up Tuesday morning with a neck full of hickeys, then realizing he had to walk into a room filled with 100 pre-schoolers, their parents and 28 staff.
“Mark, Mark, Mark, it looks like you had a spark, or some kind of fight,” sung Martin. “Oh Mark, Mark, Mark, did you go and meet some kind of vampire last night?”
Martin then stopped to say, “I’m sorry but that’s really not good enough. I was trying to get to a place where ‘the teachers laugh and he said it was a leopard print scarf,’ but I couldn’t get there. That’s where it would have ended but I couldn’t find the bridge to it.”
The singer then jokingly added to Mark, “Also, I don’t really think that’s a problem. I can’t really do something unless I really sympathize — and I don’t. That’s a luxury problem. That’s not bleak at all. That’s just awesome. Put a scarf on and stop moaning.”
Last up was Lewis, who posed what must surely rate as one of the toughest song-writing challenges of all time: singing about stumbling blurry-eyed into the bathroom, then accidentally dropping your asthma inhaler into the pan.
“What am I supposed to do with that?!” Martin laughed in response. “I used to be an international superstar. What the hell’s happened, man?!”
Refusing to be beaten, however, Martin turned Lewis’ inhaler nightmare into a song called “Lonely Christmas,” opening with the line “there’s a reason you should never be asking, a man to be multi-tasking…”
Although, surely it would have been more appropriate for him to sing the Coldplay hit “Yellow?”
