Coldplay performed an ‘an unbelievable’ new song called Orange, dedicated to Luton Town Football Club, during the band’s set at Radio 1’s Big Weekend.
The group, led by frontman Chris Martin, headlined the festival at Stockwood Park, in Luton on Sunday.
It came after a campaign by Luton Town fans for the group to change the lyrics of its song Yellow to Orange due to the club’s colours being orange and the team’s rivalry with Watford, who play in yellow.
The frontman urged the audience to ‘trust’ him and ‘relax’ as he approached the end of the set .
Before playing Yellow, which has been one of the band’s biggest hits since it was released on their 2000 album Parachutes, Chris said the track had ‘nothing to do with Luton’.
Coldplay performed an ‘an unbelievable’ new song called Orange, dedicated to Luton Town Football Club, during the band’s set at Radio 1’s Big Weekend
The group, led by frontman Chris Martin , headlined the festival at Stockwood Park, in Luton on Sunday
Prior to playing an altered version of the track, Chris said: ‘If you’re from Luton, I’m going to ask you to just suspend your anger or fears or anything you might be worried about at this point in our concert of what songs we might play or might not play’.
He went on to explain how he had been made of potentially upsetting the local crowd if he chose to sing Yellow ‘because of the Hatters and Kenilworth Road and the Luton Town Football Club.’
Chris continued by saying that if people ‘come at you with hatred and aggression’ you can respond with ‘love’.
He and the band received a rapturous reception as he introduced the previously unsung version of the track, which he said he had finished in his hotel room the night before the set.
Chris added: ‘We didn’t win all our matches, we didn’t win the cup. But when you get knocked down in Luton, you always get back up.
‘So you can come in singing Yellow, that’s all right with me, I prefer a warmer colour spelt o-r-a-n-g-e.’
He then serenaded the crowd with a chorus of ‘I love you Luton’, but also pointed that he was doing so with ‘no disrespect to Watford’.
BBC Three Counties radio presenter Justin Dealey, who began the campaign that saw the special song change told BBC News: ‘I knew something special was coming.’
Labelling it a ‘once-in-a-lifetime thing’, he said it ‘may not be good enough’ to be heard again.
Luton Town were relegated from the Premier League this season, which was their first in the top flight of English football since 1991-92.
It came after a campaign by Luton Town fans for the group to change the lyrics of Yellow to Orange due to the club’s colours being orange and the team’s rivalry with Watford
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