Hear Coldplay, Beyonce’s Clubby, Dreamlike ‘Hymn for the Weekend’

Beyonce. Photo: Peter Lindbergh

Coldplay and Beyoncé’s collaborative, clubby “Hymn for the Weekend” finds the “Drunk in Love” singer weaving her voice around the group’s R&B-inflected arrangement. “Life is a drink, and love’s a drug,” Chris Martin sings amid rattling pianos and funky percussion, before he and Beyoncé sing, “Drink for me, drink for me,” as the song grows more spacey and dreamy-sounding. Beyoncé gets the final words: “And we shoot across the sky.” The tune will appear on the band’s upcoming album, A Head Full of Dreams, due out Friday.

“It actually started off being quite a different vibe, this song,” bassist Guy Berryman told the BBC. “Chris was wanting to write a sort of party song. The words were ‘Drinks on me, drinks on me.’ And we said to him, ‘You can’t say that. You can’t get away with that.’ Then the whole story of the song changed and then he asked Beyoncé to sing on it, and she very kindly said she would. And it was amazing. She came in. She did her thing. She’s unbelievably professional. I think she was in and out in five minutes. And we are so blessed to sing on one of our songs.”

The bassist later said that he liked how “understated” the pairing sounded. “It was never supposed to be a duet or anything,” he said.

Martin recently corroborated Berryman’s story about the band protesting him singing, “Drinks on me, drinks on me” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. He also revealed the tune’s inspiration. “The original kernel was that I was listening to Flo Rida or something, and I thought, it’s such a shame that Coldplay could never have one of those late-night club songs, like ‘Turn Down for What,'” Martin said.

The album contains numerous notable guest appearances, including one by Beyoncé’s daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. Noel Gallagher, Gwyneth Paltrow and Tove Lo also appear on the record.