Coldplay Turn Into Puppets For New "Life In Technicolor ii" Video

Coldplay have unveiled their new video for the Prospekt's March EP track, "Life In Technicolor ii," the sequel to Viva La Vida's instrumental opener. The Dougal Wilson-directed clip begins with a Punch & Judy-esque show being performed for nursery schoolers, but soon a puppet version of Chris Martin and the rest of Coldplay take the stage. What follows is pyrotechnics, crowd-surfing and awesome stop-motion puppeteering. To complete the authenticity of what a Coldplay show would look like if the members were under a foot tall and made out of wood, there's even puppet roadies.

What's up with the sudden renaissance of puppetry in music videos lately? (Insert "artists are puppets of the industry" joke here.) First Kanye West explored this lost art with his "Champion" video and planned comedy sketch show. It's like the entire music industry sat down for a mandatory viewing of Being John Malkovich. Or Bride of Chucky. The "Life in Technicolor ii" single is out February 2nd and backed by the B-side "The Gold Rush."

You can catch the real life version of Coldplay when the band performs at this year's Grammy Awards. In the meantime, check out the video up top.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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