Inflatable Planets for Coldplay 'Higher Power' featured on American Idol

Coldplay are undoubtedly one of the biggest and most successful bands of the 21st century. They have sold more than 100 million records worldwide and received numerous awards including nine Brits and seven Grammys. They are famous for their anthemic songs and spectacular live performances that draw sell-out crowds across the globe. Coldplay are true artists with a reputation for creating amazing aesthetics to compliment Chris Martin’s soaring vocals.

Their long-awaited new single “Higher Power” was produced in collaboration with Swedish hitmaker Max Martin and was released on 7th May 2021. This would provide a tantalising taster of what would hopefully be their forthcoming album. Although still unconfirmed, the album is thought to be entitled ‘Kaotica’ which is the name of a fictional planet although it is also rumoured to be called ‘The Music of the Spheres’. Such is the rich speculation and excitement gathering around this much longed-for musical event.

In a recent BBC interview, frontman Chris Martin explained that the band had “been trying to imagine what music might sound like on other planets” giving the song a distinctive, intergalactic vibe. Appropriately, the first public performance of ‘Higher Power’ took place on the International Space Station where it was beamed back to Earth by satellite. The song itself is instantly catchy, uplifting, ultimately anthemic and will undoubtedly be a global hit.

Coldplay were invited to give a debut live performance of ‘Higher Power’ on the hit TV show American Idol on Sunday 9th May 2021. They needed to convey their cosmic concept in the most spectacular way as the eyes of millions of eager Coldplay fans would be upon them. This would be the first new Coldplay music played live in over two years; they needed to make maximum impact within the confines of a television studio. With this in mind, they turned to experienced artistic designers, manufacturers and installation experts Glow Inflatables to make their vision a reality.

With very little time available before the scheduled performance, Coldplay’s art director asked Glow to translate the unique flat images of eleven newly conceived signature planets into giant 3D LED illuminated replicas. The LED lighting would be required inside all of the inflatables and was required to be bright enough to be able to compete with film grade LEDs on set along with DMX control to perfectly balance the light.

First Glow set to work transforming the pictures into flat graphics that were carefully registered onto cutter guide templates. Glow’s design team worked metiuclously to replicate the images seamlessly to the original artworks so that they could be printed onto the PVC and welded together with our usual perfect print registration.

In addition to the challenge of creating planets Glow comissioned custom-built planet rings and Perspex boxes which were also carefully designed to match the original artwork. They also had to be made to fit each unique planet perfectly including one that needed to sit inside a box creating a bulging effect in line with the original design.

Following an incredibly fast turnaround, Glow’s lighting and inflatable installation team professionally rigged the eleven unique inflatable designs onto the set for the American Idol performance working carefully with each form to ensure it was safely secured in position with the correct cable lengths and fixings points as well as ensuring a spectacular finish.

The ultimate result was a cosmic display of the original and unique planets suspended above the world-famous band on their futuristic performance on American Idol. The sweeping camerawork and light show gave the impression of a space-ship’s view of a newly discovered solar-system. It looked incredible and truly brought the event to life, with the swirling colours within each inflatable matching the energy of Coldplay’s own performance.

As well as the six million viewers on the night, many also watched the performance on YouTube. Comments here included, “The set for the performance is incredible”, “Astonishing”, “The staging – wow!” “Mind-blowing”, “Stage-settings and lights beyond perfect” and “The most beautiful stage I’ve ever seen them pull off.” Clearly the fans were not disappointed, in fact the stellar production created a growing excitement around the prospect of a possible new Coldplay album.

In addition, the power of the performance along with the impressive inflatable installations provided by Glow succeeded in whetting the appetite for Coldplay’s return to live performance in the coming months.

Coldplay’s production team were really happy with the end result and were impressed by the efficiency of the whole process, especially given the tight timeframe. Glow Inflatables has once again proved themselves to be the obvious choice for creative, high-spec artistic installations at any scale on a global stage – in this case, quite literally!