A Head Full of Dreams Tour
The A Head Full of Dreams Tour was the seventh concert tour undertaken by British rock band Coldplay. It was announced on 27 November 2015 in support of their seventh studio album, A Head Full of Dreams, and marked a return to live performing at stadiums following the intimate shows from Ghost Stories Tour (2014), which saw the band playing in venues such as the Beacon Theatre and Royal Albert Hall.[3] With exception of "Fun" and hidden track "X Marks the Spot", all songs from the album were played.[4] The band combined extensive use of laser light and pyrotechnic special effects with raw, acoustic segments between stages, complementing performances with a new version of the Xylobands from Mylo Xyloto Tour (2011–12).[5]
Location
- Asia
- Europe
- North America
- South America
- Oceania
31 March 2016
15 November 2017
122
5.38 million
$523 million[a]
The concert run consisted of 122 shows in eight legs across five continents, starting at Argentina's Estadio Ciudad de La Plata on 31 March 2016 and finishing at the same venue on 15 November 2017. It also marked their first solo shows in Latin America since Viva la Vida Tour (2009–10).[6] According to Billboard, Coldplay earned $523 million from 5.38 million tickets sold in 114 reported dates, making A Head Full of Dreams Tour the third-highest-grossing tour of all time upon conclusion. In 2018, Live in Buenos Aires was released to celebrate the concert run and promoted along with The Butterfly Package, a set which additionally contained Live in São Paulo and Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams. The latter is a career-spanning documentary directed by Mat Whitecross.
Development[edit]
Background[edit]
Following the release of Coldplay's sixth album, Ghost Stories (2014), the band announced they would not be making a usual tour for it,[7] limiting themselves to one-off concerts at smaller venues around the world.[3] On 6 November 2015, "Adventure of a Lifetime" was made available as the lead single for A Head Full of Dreams.[8] The song was succeeded by the tour announcement on 27 November, which included numerous stadium dates spread across 14 countries in Europe and Latin America for the next year.[9] During an interview for The Late Late Show with James Corden, the band mentioned they would also be visiting Asia and North America.[10] In April 2016, Coldplay announced 12 new arena shows in the United States.[11] Months later, they published teasers on social media with dates for Singapore, Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.[12] In 2017, the band further promoted the tour's namesake album by releasing a companion piece named Kaleidoscope EP, which included four new songs and a live version of "Something Just Like This".[13]
Promotion[edit]
Before starting the tour, Coldplay performed the Super Bowl 50 halftime show, which included guest appearances from Beyoncé, Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson and the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles,[14] earning the biggest audience in history for a group and male act performing at the event as well.[15] The band later appeared in multiple festivals, including the BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend in Exeter.[16] Lead singer Chris Martin said he lived "the first few years of my life less than 500 yards from where we'll be performing so this couldn't be more of a homecoming for me".[16] In 2016, they were announced as headliners for Glastonbury Festival,[17] setting the record for most headlining sets ever by any act.[18] Months later, the band appeared at Global Citizen Festival in Mumbai, where they played "Maa Tujhe Salaam" with A. R. Rahman.[19] Martin has been the event's curator since 2015 and plans to fulfil the role for the next 15 years.[20] He invited Colombian singer Shakira for the Hamburg edition.[21] In 2017, Coldplay were part of the iHeartRadio Music Festival.[22]
Reception[edit]
Commercial performance[edit]
Fans who pre-ordered A Head Full of Dreams (2015) from Amazon were given early access to buy tickets for the United Kingdom shows on 26 November 2015, while general public sales for the entire first European leg were opened on the following day.[9] Due to high demand, Coldplay added extra dates in Mexico City, Barcelona, Manchester, Zurich, London, Amsterdam and Copenhagen.[40] Over 900,000 people attempted to buy tickets for the concerts in Seoul, leading online servers to crash.[41] The performance at Foro Sol on 17 April 2016 saw the venue's biggest ever single-day attendance (67,451 tickets),[1] a record also broken at Bangkok's Rajamangala Stadium (62,068 tickets).[42] Additionally, the band later earned the highest-grossing boxscore report of Singapore's history ($12.4 million).[43] In Taiwan, they had the biggest ticket sales of all time for an international act, a record broken by Blackpink in 2023.[44] The concerts in London and Paris were the most prolific of their career both in attendance and gross according to Pollstar.[45] After the last show in La Plata, Billboard claimed the A Head Full of Dreams Tour was the third-highest-grossing tour of all time, earning $523,033,675 from 5,389,586 tickets sold in 114 dates.[46]
Critical reception[edit]
The tour was met with generally positive reviews from music critics, with Ludovic Hunter-Tilney from the Financial Times describing it as a "bubble of positivity making its way around a turbulent world".[47] He stated large venues were a "natural home" for Coldplay and where their "uplifting platitudes make most sense".[47] Writing for The Sydney Morning Herald, Bernard Zuel commented the concert was "very big, but just on the right side of huge. They get loud and in your face but never up your nose. They grab for audience participation but collegially rather than greedily", praising how they crafted a "continuously satisfying pop show that has elements of U2 and Taylor Swift, Springsteen and Kylie, but somehow retains a sliver of modesty".[48] In his five-star Wembley Stadium review for the Evening Standard, David Smyth stated Coldplay were "playing more stadium shows in London than anyone else this summer because no one else is doing this kind of thing better. Long may they shine".[49] Similarly, The Guardian's Kitty Empire rated their Croke Park performance with 4/5 stars and mentioned it felt "like the encore, the kind that sends you out into the night streets, hollering the chorus" even when the band were "just two songs in".[50]