The Global Citizen Festival is a series of annual festivals organised by Global Poverty Project, which seeks to contribute to ending extreme poverty. It was founded in 2012. In 2015 Chris Martin of Coldplay was given a 15-year tenure as festival curator. In most years there is more than one festival, as Festivals are held in different countries.
In 2017 two Festivals took place, the first in Hamburg on July 6, the eve of the G20 summit, while the second (main) concert was in Central Park NY in September. The Hamburg concert featured a number of world leaders, with Canada’s Justin Trudeau introducing openers Coldplay. Coldplay played 4 songs before Shakira came on. The audience went nuts!
Now that’s a powerful, big-stadium take of Coldplay’s dance-influenced hit A Sky Full of Stars, but mostly Shakira features as a very famous backing singer, which seems a waste given that it’s Shakira we’re talking about. (If you don’t know much about Shakira, it is worth reading her Wikipedia entry: she is a phenomenon). Fortunately, A Sky Full of Stars is only a part of the story of the Hamburg collaboration, and it came after several songs where the artists had considerably more interaction.
The Global Citizen webpage, tells the story. After “smashing through Yellow, Martin and Shakira sat side-by-side onstage to playfully rap Chantaje. Shakira and Martin then moved into a duet of her new solo material with “Me Enamore” and bounced between the artists’ songs … as global citizens cheered them on. The duo was the match made in Hamburg that you never knew you wanted, but now it seems impossible to imagine a world without it”. Here’s a video of Coldplay backing Shakira:
The 2017 concerts were a resounding success for the Global Citizen Festival. Time Magazine stated that the events raised “$3.2 billion for sustainable development … affecting 221 million people”. So well done curator Chris Martin.
The Global Citizen website concludes its write-up of the 2017 Hamburg Festival by reiterating the impact of the Coldplay and Shakira set: “Pharrell Williams, Ellie Goulding and more all followed on a night of many euphoric moments at Global Citizen Festival Hamburg. But it was Coldplay and Shakira who really hit the high notes, and forged a partnership that we all hope to see again”. This is a great reason to view the entire Coldplay Shakira collaboration.
If you would like to see more from Global Citizen Festival, you can subscribe to their YouTube channel. You can also visit their official website for more information.