Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow used to double date with Beyonce and Jay Z. Bey duetted with Martin on Coldplay’s A Head Full of Dreams. And unless you spent the last 24 hours in a coma, you are aware that Beyonce stunned during Coldplay‘s Super Bowl 50 halftime show.
So Bey and C are BFFs, right? Sure, but that doesn’t mean she’ll hold back from cutting the British singer-songwriter down to size where applicable. In a new Rolling Stone cover story, Martin reveals Bey once shut him down on a Coldplay duet in no uncertain terms.
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After sharing a song with her called “Hook Up,” Martin says Beyonce told him, “In the sweetest possible way, she told me, ‘I really like you — but this is awful.'”
Obviously, they eventually found a song they could agree to duet on. Not only does Beyonce sing on “Hymn for the Weekend,” but she brings it in the music video, too.
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As you probably recall, Beyonce isn’t the only artist to make headlines for turning down Coldplay. Back in 2014, Martin was similarly forthcoming about David Bowie declining a duet. “One time I sent him a song to ask him to sing on it. He called me and said, ‘It’s not one of your best.'” Unlike Beyonce, though, Bowie never circled back for a follow-up collab. (Now we just need one more artist to turn down a Coldplay duet and it’s officially a trend.)
Elsewhere in the RS story, Martin shares the status of his amicable divorce with Paltrow, who attended Super Bowl 50 (with Blue Ivy, no less). “I have a very wonderful separation-divorce,” Martin said. “It’s a divorce — but it’s a weird one. I don’t think about that word very often. I don’t see it that way. I see it as more like you meet someone, you have some time together and things just move through.” You can read more here.