Chris Martin

Chris Martin is a British singer, songwriter, and pianist born on March 2, 1977, in Exeter, Devon, England. He is the lead vocalist of the rock band Coldplay, which he co-founded with Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, and Will Champion while studying at University College London in the late 1990s. The band took its current name in 1998 and signed with Parlophone the following year.

Coldplay's debut album Parachutes arrived in 2000 and contained the single Yellow, which became their first international hit. The follow-up A Rush of Blood to the Head in 2002 produced The Scientist and Clocks, the latter of which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 2004. Martin's falsetto vocals and piano-led songwriting became central to the group's sound across subsequent albums including X&Y, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, Mylo Xyloto, and A Head Full of Dreams.

Coldplay has won seven Grammy Awards and nine Brit Awards, and the band headlined the Super Bowl 50 halftime show in 2016. Martin has also collaborated with artists such as Jay-Z, Rihanna, Kanye West, and BTS, and he co-wrote the Jay-Z track Beach Chair.

He married actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 2003, and the couple have two children, Apple and Moses. They announced their separation in 2014 using the term conscious uncoupling and finalized their divorce in 2016. Martin is known for his support of the Make Trade Fair campaign and Oxfam.

Their name Chris derives from the Greek Christos, meaning anointed one, typically as a short form of Christopher. Chris was widely used as a given name for boys in mid-twentieth-century English-speaking countries and continues as a common nickname.