10 More Huge Songs That Bands Refused To Play Live
9. Speed Of Sound - Coldplay
Despite often being the butt of musical jokes, Coldplay are beloved by their dedicated fanbase. Even if they weren’t, they’ve all got shedloads of money, so it doesn’t matter.
In 2005, they released the album X&Y, which sadly wasn’t about graphs and their axes. Its lead single was Speed of Sound and it sold well on both sides of the Atlantic, cracking the top ten in both the US and UK.
Everybody seemed to love it… except the band themselves.
Over time, Coldplay began to think less and less of Speed of Sound, particularly lead singer Chris Martin, who once said in an interview that they “never got it right”. Rather than constantly perform a song they weren’t that keen on, they instead quietly retired it from their live shows.
It makes the odd appearance every now and then, but (at the time of writing) it hasn’t been played in concert since 2022, which was the first time it had been performed in six years. The next single from X&Y, Fix You, has been played more than twice as often as its album neighbour.