The Internet's Favorite Affair Is Causing Coldplay's Music to Spike on the Streaming Charts

2025 has been a crazy year to be a Coldplay fan. First, vocalist Chris Martin and actor Dakota Johnson reportedly broke up after being together for around nine years. After that, an unexpected development at Gillette Stadium made Coldplay go viral on the internet. The CEO of the Astronomer tech firm, Andy Byron, was caught having an affair with the head of the company's Human Resources department during one of the band's shows.

Kristin Cabot, Andy's date for the night, never expected her relationship to be exposed on social media thanks to the kiss cam being placed on the secretive couple in the middle of the show. That was the craziest part of the night, but it appears that the affair actually helped the band. Has the recent viral phenomenon made Coldplay more popular on the music streaming charts? Here's what we know about how the internet sensation affected Coldplay's chart performance.

There might be no such thing as bad press. According to Marca, Coldplay did climb up several spots on Spotify's charts thanks to the internet viral sensation related to the affair between Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot. As of July 2025, the group's "Sparks" was placed on the 42nd spot on Spotify's Top 50 USA chart. There is no direct link between the two events, but it's important to take into consideration how the affair footage was seen over 60 million times.

Another factor that could have contributed to this surge in popularity for Coldplay's music could be the reported separation between Chris Martin and Dakota Johnson. After outlets such as People claimed that the band's vocalist and the Madame Web star weren't together anymore, Coldplay's successful concert tour continued.

Social media users online couldn't help but notice that Chris looked particularly emotional while performing "Sparks" compared to when the tour started, according to Yahoo. The same song is the one that went viral on Spotify's Top 50 USA chart. In the end, there's no way of knowing if the vocalist's emotional rendition of the song or the viral affair caused the song to overperform. Coldplay's fans will continue to enjoy the success of the band regardless of how it continues to grow.

What happened at the Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts was just a side effect of what Coldplay has been working on over the past few years. The concert was a part of the band's "Music of the Spheres World Tour." The shows began all the way back in the spring of 2022 with a couple of shows in Costa Rica. "Music of the Spheres" went through Mexico, France, and Belgium before making its way to Foxborough, where the viral affair video was caught.

The Guardian praised the tour's visual identity. Up until the Astronomer video happened, Coldplay had enjoyed three whole years of a massively successful endeavor thanks to a tour that celebrated their successful trajectory as artists. Coldplay never intended for the affair between Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot to be exposed in one of their concerts, but the internet sensation could have boosted the already massive success of the group in unexpected ways.