When Coldplay played their headline show on Sunday, May 26, to round up BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend Festival, they had a special surprise in store for their fans. Singer Chris Martin made a reference to the fact that his band has been a mainstay of the event for the previous ten years as they got ready to perform the Ghost Stories favorite “Magic.”
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Martin remarked, “We’ve been playing this, one Big Weekend, since we were basically children.” “And we only play one Big Weekend because we couldn’t have maintained our jobs without Radio 1.”
“To say thank you to you for being so wonderful for the whole three days, bring on a singer who’s much younger, more beautiful, more successful, better in every way, and sing a song of ours that is okay but make it really good,” the singer joked as she introduced Sabrina Carpenter, one of the other performers at the festival.
Martin said, “Welcome, from America, U.S.A., Sabrina Carpenter, let’s go!” after the audience had reached a fever pitch. In response, Carpenter expressed the same enthusiasm as the crowd, saying, “Congrats to Coldplay! How in the hell is that?
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Below, see Carpenter sing “Magic” with Coldplay.
The song’s sparse opening saw Martin and Carpenter harmonizing, “Call it magic/ Call it true/ I call it magic/ When I’m with you,” as a graphic of a man trapped inside a top hat struggling to hold on to a woman blowing away from him screened behind them.
The band, who have frequently invited guest stars up to join them during the epic two-year Music of the Spheres road trip, leaned into the song.
The 25-year-old singer/actress made several appearances in Coldplay’s repertoire throughout their performance. A few songs earlier, Martin was playing their popular ballad “Fix You.” To the pleasure of the audience, he jokingly inserted a clip from Carpenter’s smash song “Espresso” into the tune, singing, “That’s that me, espresso.”
