After accidentally exposing an affair at a recent concert, Coldplay gave their subsequent audience a fair warning about cameras turning onto them, poking fun at the whole thing on Saturday night.
While playing in Madison, Wisconsin, over the weekend, the band once again did their “The Jumbotron Song,” wherein audience members are shown on the big screen, and lead singer Chris Martin makes up a song about them on the spot. But, before they officially started, Martin explained what was coming.
“We’d like to say hello to some of you in the crowd,” he said, taking a long pause after. “How we’re gonna do that is we’re gonna use our cameras and put some of you on the big screen.”
At that, Martin took another good pause, and even let some laughter slip. “So please, if you haven’t done your makeup, do your makeup now,” he joked.
Of course, the comment was actually a thinly veiled nod at the last time the band did this, which had catastrophic fallout for one couple.
In case you missed it, Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and his head of HR Kristin Cabot were among the random audience members selected to be on camera last week. They were spotted watching the show in a tight embrace, with Byron’s front to Cabot’s back, and their arms intertwined.
But, when they realized they were onscreen, the two literally jumped apart, with Cabot turning her back to the camera and Byron just fully hitting the deck to go out of view. At that, Martin joked that “either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.”
It was, apparently, the former. Thanks to the couple’s reaction, Internet sleuths quickly pieced together their identities — and the fact that they were both married to other people (with Byron having two kids). The incident led to the resignation of Byron, and countless re-creations of the moment across the country as a meme.
Martin did not specifically call out the incident at Saturday’s show, but he did ask at least one couple shown on the big screen if they were “a legitimate couple.”
You can watch that moment in the video above.
