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Watch Coldplay Cover Prince’s ‘1999’ With Backup Choir On NPR’s Tiny Desk

Coldplay has just given us one of the loosest NPR Tiny Desk Concerts. Taking the For Love Choir with them, they covered Prince’s 1991 classic, ‘1999’. Plus, they gave us renditions of their own ‘Cry Cry Cry’, ‘Viva La Vida’, and ‘Broken’.

‘Champion of the World’ closed out the set, but can’t be heard in the video.

‘Cry Cry Cry’ and ‘Broken’ come from Coldplay’s latest album, Everyday Life. The album, which was released in November last year, actually had a helping hand from some of the For Love Choir members. Chris Martin jokes during the clip, “In a very real way, they’ve Photoshopped our songs to be much better than they actually are.”

Martin has the time of his life throughout the clip, exercising his healthy sense of humour and the most joyful piano playing you’ve ever seen.

They strip ‘Viva La Vida’ right back with some special half a capella parts mixed in.

The ‘1999’ cover is super special too. Martin lets the choir do most of the heavy lifting, with each giving us a solo line.

Closing the Tiny Desk set, Martin said, “We really haven’t done many things for this album, we’ve been trying to stay in semi-hibernation, but coming out for something like Tiny Desk is so pure and so wonderful and makes us feel like, ‘Oh, this is why we do what we do.'”

Last year, Martin announced that the band did not intent to tour the new album until they find a way to tour that is beneficial to the environment.

Watch Coldplay’s Tiny Desk set in full below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENSOFQCmj78

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