{"id":622534,"date":"2026-09-21T05:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T05:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/622534\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T05:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T05:04:11","slug":"coldplays-chris-martin-honours-john-farnham-in-original-song-for-melbourne-tribute-concert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/622534\/","title":{"rendered":"Coldplay’s Chris Martin honours John Farnham in original song for Melbourne tribute concert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tell us about your experience. <\/p>\n

Coldplay has sold out stadiums around the world, but the band’s lead singer has declared that he can’t compete with Australian music legend John Farnham’s voice.<\/p>\n

International and Australian performers came together to celebrate Farnham’s music career at a charity concert in Melbourne last night, raising money for head and neck cancer.<\/p>\n

Coldplay frontman Chris Martin recorded a special song to be played at the concert called A Better Singer Than Me.<\/p>\n

“I’m really sorry I can’t be with you,” he told a sold-out crowd at the Rod Laver Arena show.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“John, I send you all my love.<\/p>\n

“Shane Warne is the person that told me about how great you are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“And this is a song about that and about you.”<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

Farnham’s son, James Farnham, said in a social media post that the original song was a “wild” surprise.<\/p>\n

“I knew Chris Martin was doing the show, but I had no idea what he was actually doing,” he said.<\/p>\n

“This video is me out in the crowd, watching it for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I still can\u2019t believe he wrote a song for my dad.”<\/p>\n

The song explained how Martin was introduced to Farnham’s music during a trip to check in on bushfire-impacted communities in Victoria after the devastation of Black Saturday in 2009<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“My friend Shane said to me, ‘There’s been a bloody big bushfire. It’s something you should see. I’m going in up to Kinglake to check on how they are and I made us a mix tape, we can listen in the car,'” Martin sang.<\/p>\n

“‘And I really do love Coldplay. I love Coldplay, it’s true. But my favourite is John Farnham, he’s a better singer than you.'”<\/p>\n

Farnham performed You’re the Voice, backed by Coldplay, at the Sound Relief concert at the SCG in 2009 to raise money for communities affected by the Black Saturday bushfires.<\/p>\n

Martin also referred to this in his song, with tongue-in-cheek lyrics saying singer-songwriter Natalie Imbruglia suggested that Farnham would be the better choice to lead a relief show.<\/p>\n

“She said, ‘Here’s what you can do. You can call John Farnham, he’s a better singer than you,'” Martin sang.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/p>\n

John Farnham and Chris Martin performed together at the Sound Relief concert in 2009. (\u00a0AAP: Joe Castro)<\/p>\n

Farnham was unable to attend the Melbourne concert due to deteriorating health, with his family releasing a statement on the weekend.<\/a><\/p>\n

His star power was still felt during the show<\/a>, as other entertainers took to the stage to perform beloved songs from the 77-year-old’s catalogue.<\/p>\n

Jessica Mauboy, John Stevens, Jack Jones, Mahalia Barnes and Human Nature opened the show with a medley of Farnham songs.<\/p>\n

Hugh Jackman and Celine Dion were also beamed into the arena from abroad, both performing Farnham songs that had inspired them.<\/p>\n

Martin sang that Farnham’s songs would keep living even once “we’ve all gone”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tell us about your experience. Coldplay has sold out stadiums around the world, but the band’s lead singer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[9577,7741,146,85,46,281328,125834,18330,409,113495,281326,281327],"class_list":["post-622534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-chris-martin","tag-coldplay","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-james-farnham","tag-john-farnham","tag-melbourne","tag-music","tag-rod-laver-arena","tag-shane-warne","tag-tribute-concert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}