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[Music] then i sit down i started singing the chorus and it felt so good so then i called phil our fifth member and max martin and said i think we got a song to give to bts and they said why don't we hold on to it and give it to bts
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[Music] this is a special song dude i'd love to know a little bit about it chris and how you and these this all conquering wonderful group of individuals called bts came to be part of the music of the spheres and uh the whole thing became my
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universe well it's a love song yes that came from a loving text it had been in my mind for a while that someone had said bts were wondering if we'd do a song for them or something something like that and um the phrase my universe
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in this text was oh that's a cool song title and um [Music] so so occasionally uh i ask producers we're working with if they have any like spare loops they don't know what to do with that's often how our pop songs come about it happened with a song called something
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just like this and a song another one um and uh anyway bill who we work with a lot this guy called bill rocco i said do you ever make tracks and he'd made this loop this track with a bit of vocals on it and i said oh please can i take that
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away and i was i'm not a great driver but i was driving around and uh then the chorus of my universe just landed love that right back to the studio i said okay let's put this down now this is all in the same day you did a
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u-turn literally did a u-turn then i sit down i started singing the chorus and it felt so good so then i called phil our fifth member and max martin and said i think we got a song to give to bts and they said why don't we hold on to it and give it
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to bts and then we started communicating with bts and then went to korea and then the concept of it's a song about love that's difficult or it's forbidden or you can't quite get it together so it felt like really cool to have two bands that
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it's a difficult love story but it works in the end it really does and i love them and we love them and it's been such a joy it's something you could look at so cynically and we have at times but anytime there's actual communication or
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or music between us it just feels so good and so i unabashedly and unashamedly feel really grateful for the song grateful for the person that inspired the song and grateful for the people we sing it with i love that you went to korea to have the experience so much of
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the way music gets made now through convenience and just through schedule and no judgement one way or the other gets done via the magic of file sharing and i think it's not the cold play way i know you love the tactility of being in
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the room and having that experience when you're working with people if you can you will so how was that trip to korea the trip was i don't know if you know the film back to the future where uh i think that's given out of birth chris
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but there's a there's an outfit that doc brown wears that's like a sort of nuclear hazmat suit yes and going to korea was like hanging out with 10 000 people just like that and we had to go through i think 13 checkpoints and it was
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and tests and it was so difficult to get in and i was like i have no idea where i am i don't understand anything anyone's saying to me but somehow i have faith that we're going to see bts tomorrow and it happened being in the room with
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those guys i love them as well and they've gotten to know them incrementally over from one conversation to another where i think we're at a point where we we sort of understand each other better than we ever have and and i and i and i'm enjoying that
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process i'm enjoying the the the gentle kind of familiarity i'm getting out of that rather than this forced thing they they really are very tight and they work in their own way so my question chris is seeing them in their own natural environment
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not on the stage at the billboard awards or somewhere else like you come to us you went to them what did you what did you take from that experience being in the creative space within well of course the k-pop system is very different to what we're used to
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you could say oh everyone's just manufactured and all this but within that there's a real bandiness to them you know they're really as far as i can tell really friends you know really in it together and i think people
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with any great boy band if you want to call it boy band or girl band like the spice girls or coldplay live coldplay uh there's just something beyond the being put togetherness there's a natural chemistry yeah and and they're just people that i like
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yeah yeah me too the album is uh is now officially named it's called music of the spheres it comes with it um a universe pun very much intended um you know a world of of um uncovering new emotions and feelings and languages and all kinds of things
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that we're going to get to know through this music um for you and your friends in the band uh to be able to to go beyond our earthly environments how sort of much fun has it been to to look beyond what we inherently know as a
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species and start to think about what life might be like with other life forms of the languages and really be able to lean into that on a creative space well it's very liberating but the truth of it is zayn that really it's just a bunch of love songs
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cleverly disguised and well not that cleverly disguised actually there's a freedom to say when you set something in another place there's a freedom to say what you really feel so there's a lot of love in there and uh also some confusion about
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someone like me who you know has a way to go in terms of understanding love and everything and and then also like not just romantic love but love for your fellow humans and yeah how do you handle people you don't love and
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regimes you might not like so so in this in a strange way there's it's set in aliens but it's really about here you uh remain a dedicated uh example of our species you're doing global citizen this weekend you continue
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to find ways through your own journey as you eloquently put it the learnings you have to go through to try and find ways to contribute and and be available and and i and i wonder and maybe this is placeholder for a deeper conversation later
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how challenging their balance is sometimes between what you give versus what you hold back for yourself i have a way to go in my heart and my you know how i live my own life i think doing things like global citizen is just better than not doing them
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i don't know if it's ideal or if it's the best model of trying to use your voice and encourage everybody to use their voice you know but it's one thing that becomes apparent when you tour around the world is that no one's really in charge so
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everybody's voice is important everyone has an equal right to be here and i like working with global citizen because it's the organization that really encourages individual voices it's not it isn't about pop stars telling you
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what to think i think for one reason and another some weeks i i'm questioning my own worth and validity so of course on a bigger picture that makes even less sense but like i said i feel like it's better to show up to not show up well that's one of the things i love
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about coldplay and about your songwriting is that you put those vulnerabilities out there and in doing so we feel less alone it's the great trade and i would never expect it of my favorite songwriters but i respect it when you do do that you're very sweet
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saying you know i've i watch these new music fridays when you know all the right things to say yeah i love your band you know that i think you guys are one of the most interesting and weird bands ever thanks for saying it to us you