Is Melbourne cursed? A few weeks after Olivia Rodrigo unexpectedly plunged into a trap door onstage at the city’s Rod Laver Arena, Chris Martin has done the same at the Marvel Stadium.
Coldplay were performing in Melbourne as part of the band’s Music of the Spheres tour. Following their rendition of “Everglow,” Martin stumbled backwards while addressing the crowd and fell through a similar trap door. A crew member reached up from the trap door and caught Martin as he tumbled, but the frontman was still clearly shaken.
As he climbed out, Martin noted, “That’s, uh, not planned.” He added to his crew, “Thank you for catching me, so much. Holy shit. That was nearly a YouTube moment.” (Apology to Martin: It is now actually a YouTube moment.)
The incident was not dissimilar to what happened to Rodrigo, who fell while hyping up the crowd during her Oct. 13 concert. After the heavy fall, Rodrigo immediately popped back up and said, “Oh my God, that was fun! I’m ok!” She added, “Sometimes there’s just a hole in the stage. That’s alright! Ok, where was I?”
Last week, Rodrigo told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show that it was “actually kind of a beautiful thing” that she fell while in Australia, shortly after her performance at the Philippine Arena in Manila.
“I’m really happy it happened in hindsight,” she said. “That was my next stop — Australia after the Philippines. I was thinking about my family and my heritage and my relatives. And I feel and I was all shaken up. I went to the hospital after, nothing happened but they just wanted to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. And randomly, the nurse was a Filipino man with the same name as my grandpa who just passed away a few months ago. I was like, wow, that was him looking out for me and making sure I didn’t get hurt. I’m really happy it happened.”
Coldplay kicked off the Music of the Spheres tour in 2022, following the 2021 release of their Music of the Spheres album. They had subtitled that record, Vol. I: From Earth with Love, and recently unveiled Music of the Spheres Vol. II: Moon Music as an extension of the first release. The Music of the Spheres tour will continue next year in North America, including a handful of stadiums around the United States and two dates in Toronto.