We’ve heard him sing with freakin’ Bing Crosby, but a man’s gotta draw the line somewhere: David Bowie has shot down a proposed Coldplay collaboration.
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, gearing up to release his band’s ‘final’ album A Head Full of Dreams, revealed on Sunday’s BBC Music Awards that he once wrote a song in the hopes of getting Bowie to sing vocals on it. But Bowie shot down the idea because the song simply wasn’t good enough.
“One time I sent him a song to ask him to sing on it,” Martin recalled. “He called me and said, ‘It’s not one of your best.’ He’s got very high standards and I appreciate that. It inspires the rest of us to keep our standards high.”
Well, that’s a diplomatic way to handle rejection. All the same, Martin still has plenty of love for Bowie’s music, including his latest release.
“When ‘Where Are We Now?’ came out I was staggered, and also annoyed,” he said. “Like, come on, it’s not fair. He’s already got all these amazing songs and then this instant classic.”
