Chris Martin has vowed that Coldplay will stop making music after 12 albums, but the band's bassist Guy Berryman is taking that "with a pinch of salt."
“Chris is never going to stop writing, so I kind of take it with a little bit of a pinch of salt,” he admitted in a new interview with Rolling Stone. “We’re still years away from any kind of retirement. But I think you have to have a plan. If you’re running a marathon, you know you have to run 26 miles. But if somebody said to you, ‘OK, start running and just don’t stop,’ it’s quite hard to motivate yourself.”
Earlier this year, Martin explained the 12-album cutoff in an interview with NME. “The 12 album thing is very real, and it’s a nice feeling," he said. "It doesn’t mean we won’t tour or finish some compilation things or outtakes or whatever. It just means that the main story is told. That’s just what feels really right. Just knowing that’s happening supercharges all the work we’re doing now.”
He also revealed that their last two albums will be a "musical" and self-titled album that circles back to their first EP. “The cover of the album, I’ve known it since 1999. It’s a photograph by the same photographer that took the photo that’s the cover of our first EP,” Martin said.
Coldplay have been on their Music of the Spheres tour since 2022. A report from Pollstar recently unveiled that theirs was the second-highest grossing tour of 2024, behind Taylor Swift's record-breaking Eras tour.