Coldplay singer Chris Martin portrays bullied schoolkid in video for Champion of the World

Chris Martin plays a bullied schoolkid in the band’s new video for its track Champion of the World.

In the clip, the 42-year-old vocalist is seen playing the role of a grade school boy who’s seen taking abuse from classmates and getting yelled at by his parents, all the while finding his escape in music.

The English singer is seen playing to an empty talent show, riding a bike and later dreaming of bigger things, including a sequence in which the band is seen playing in space and on the moon.

French director Cloé Bailly, who made the video in Los Angeles, said in a statement that the ‘video is about this magic power that kids have to switch off from reality and jump into their own world.’

Martin said the song was inspired by the song Los Angeles, Be Kind from late vocalist Scott Hutchinson, who has a co-writing credit on the song.

‘When I first heard [‘Los Angeles, Be Kind’], I thought it was going to go one way; but it went another,’ the Grammy-winning musician said in a statement, Rolling Stone reported in November. 

He continued: ‘Anyway, Champion of the World is the song that came from following the other path, and that’s why Scott is a co-writer on this song.’ 

Sequences in the video correspond to the lyrics of the song, which include: ‘So I’m flying on my bicycle/ Heading upwards from the Earth/ I am jumping with no parachute/ Out into the universe/ I have E.T. on my bicycle/ Because giving up won’t work/ Now I’m riding on my rocketship/ And I’m champion of the world.’ 

It’s the latest release from the band’s Everyday Life, which has already spawned the singles Orphans, Arabesque, Everyday Life, Daddy and Cry Cry Cry; the clip for Cry Cry Cry was directed by Martin’s girlfriend Dakota Johnson, 30.

The singer is father to two teenage children – daughter Apple, 15, and son Moses, 13 – with his ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow, 47.