At a concert at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena over the weekend, Coldplay paid tribute to PNW-natives Pearl Jam by covering “Nothingman,” an unconventional addition to their usual setlist.
Chris Martin started off by telling the audience: “This is a 44-year old man remembering how much he fell in love with Pearl Jam in 1991 … And if you told that kid he would be there singing that song he’d say “the kid would have said are you sure that is a good idea?”, and I’d say “maybe not but we’re doing it.”
“So because we’re here in Seattle,” frontman Chris Martin told the audience, “We wanted to pay a tribute to one of the bands that we fell in love with when we were just young teenagers in the ‘90s.”
While he admits to only having learned to play the song 25 minutes prior to their performance, Martin had actually covered “Nothingman” with Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam himself at the Global Citizen Live event back in 2018.
At their Seattle show, the Coldplay singer expresses his affections for Vedder during the cover. “If Eddie ever hears this,” he said, “I love you man, thank you for being so kind to our band.”