Coldplay’s Chris Martin gave Melbourne fans a shock during the band’s final night at Marvel Stadium when he took an unexpected tumble through a trap door on stage on Sunday, Nov. 3.
In videos shared to social media, Martin can be seen walking backward while reading fan signs, before accidentally stepping into an open section of the stage, vanishing from sight in a split second.
The nearly 60,000-strong crowd gasped collectively as Martin momentarily disappeared. However, he quickly reappeared from beneath the stage, reassuring fans with a smile and saying, “That’s not planned.”
Coincidentally, Martin isn’t the only artist who has recently fallen through a trap door onstage in Melbourne.
On Oct. 18, Olivia Rodrigo also fell through a trap door while performing at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena during her “GUTS” tour. Rodrigo, unfazed, joked with the audience upon resurfacing, quipping, “Oh my God, that was fun! I’m okay! Wow. Sometimes, there’s just a hole in the stage. That’s alright! Alright, where was I?”
Rodrigo later admitted on The Tonight Show that she was “shaken up and the incident “was really scary”.
Meanwhile, Marvel Stadium saw another milestone with Coldplay’s four-show run, which drew an unprecedented 227,000 fans throughout their Melbourne dates. The attendance broke the long-standing record set by AC/DC’s Black Ice tour, which brought in 181,495 fans across three shows in 2010.
“Coldplay have officially broken our all-time largest attendance record for a band at Marvel Stadium, with 227k people attending across the four Music of The Spheres World Tour shows held at the Stadium,” the venue wrote on Instagram today (Nov. 4).
According to the venue’s history, the current record for the highest-attended concert belongs to fellow English musician Adele, whose performance on March 19, 2017, was attended by a total of 77,327. Just shy of one year later, Ed Sheeran broke the record for the largest attendance for a concert series by a single artist, bringing in a total audience of 257,751 across four shows in March 2018.
Coldplay’s Australian tour has been met with major fanfare, partly due to the band’s first performances in the country since 2016. This tour supports both Music of the Spheres and the recently released Moon Music, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
The band’s Australian tour continues with upcoming shows at Sydney’s Accor Stadium, as they support their tenth studio album, Moon Music, and their chart-topping Music of the Spheres.
