Coldplay performed an “amazing” new song called Orange, dedicated to Luton Town Football Club, during the band’s performance on Radio 1’s Big Weekend.
The group, led by frontman Chris Martin, headlined the festival at Stockwood Park in Luton on Sunday.
It came after a campaign by Luton Town fans for the group to change the lyrics of their song Yellow to Orange due to the club’s colors being orange and the team’s rivalry with Watford, who play in yellow.
The frontman urged the crowd to “trust” him and “relax” as the end of the set approached.
Before playing Yellow, which has been one of the band’s biggest hits since it was released on their 2000 album Parachutes, Chris said the song had “nothing to do with Luton”.
Coldplay performed an “amazing” new song called Orange, dedicated to Luton Town Football Club, during the band’s performance on Radio 1’s Big Weekend.
The group, led by frontman Chris Martin, headlined the festival at Stockwood Park in Luton on Sunday.
Before playing an altered version of the song, Chris said: “If you’re from Luton, I’m going to ask you to just suspend your anger or your fears or anything that might be worrying you at this point in our concert of what songs we could to touch or not to touch’.
He went on to explain how the home crowd had been made to bother if he chose to sing Yellow “because of the Hatters and Kenilworth Road and Luton Town Football Club”.
Chris went on to say that if people “come at you with hate and aggression,” you can respond with “love.”
He and the band received a rapturous reception when he performed the previously unsung version of the song, which he said he had finished in his hotel room the night before the set.
Chris added: “We didn’t win all our games, we didn’t win the cup. But when you get knocked down at Luton you always get back up.
“Then you can enter singing Yellow, that’s fine with me, I prefer a warmer color, orange.”
He then serenaded the crowd with a chorus of “I love you Luton”, but also noted that he was doing so “with no disrespect to Watford”.
BBC Three Counties radio presenter Justin Dealey, who started the campaign that saw the special song change, said bbc news: ‘I knew something special was coming.’
Calling it a “once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he said it “may not be good enough” to listen to again.
Luton Town were relegated from the Premier League this season, which was their first in English football’s top flight since 1991-92.
It came after a campaign by Luton Town fans for the group to change the lyrics from Yellow to Orange due to the club’s colors being orange and the team’s rivalry with Watford.