Chris Martin on Coldplay’s spoof Game Of Thrones: The Musical

Coldplay and the GoT cast — (Image credit: MPIRock/ MediaPunch via Getty Images Ian Gavan/Getty Images)

Throughout its eight-season run, Game Of Thrones managed to keep fans on their toes with a series of shock twists and turns but one of the most surprising (and least bloody) was Coldplay coming up with Game Of Thrones: The Musical. The 2015 spoof, filmed for Red Nose Day, brought together the stadium-conquering indie-pop titans with various cast members including Mark Addy, Kit Harington, Rose Leslie, Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke and more as Chris Martin & co. encouraged them, with varying levels of success, to get involved in such singalongs as The Red Wedding, Rastafarian Targaryen and a reworking of Wild Thing titled Wildling among others.

Speaking to this writer not long after it aired, Chris Martin looked back on the whole project with relish. “The tunes on that are really good! That was such a joy to make,” he said, adding that there was more to be taken from it than just having a laugh, the songs helping to influence Coldplay's creative process on their 2015 album A Head Full Of Dreams. “It was really important because it made us realise we can record quickly and with enthusiasm and joy and it doesn’t need to be technically perfect, and it’s ok to be nerdy,” added the singer. “These are important life lessons. It was really nice to have collaboration with Will [Champion, drummer] on that cos Will knows the most about Game Of Thrones. I said to Will, ‘Send me an email of the main nerdy stuff you want us to sing about’. He sent this whole thing and about three of the songs came from it.”

It wasn’t the first time that Champion had crossed paths with the fantasy show. The drummer appeared in the infamous Season 3 episode The Rains Of Castamere, appearing as a guest musician at The Red Wedding. His GoT geekiness obviously held him and his band in good stead when it came to making the mockumentary, which you can watch in full below:

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, Champions Journal, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleague Ted Kessler. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he's interviewed some of the world's biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Radiohead, Liam and Noel Gallagher, Florence + The Machine, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more.