Overview
"Higher Power" is a song by British rock band Coldplay from their ninth album Music of the Spheres. It was released on 7 May 2021 as the lead single, being written by the band's four members, Federico Vindver and Denise Carite, while production was handled by Max Martin. Oscar Holter and Bill Rahko also helped to co-produce the song, which received generally positive reviews from music critics and was nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.
Background
During an interview with Mark Savage of BBC News, lead vocalist Chris Martin, said that the song just dropped out the sky: "I came up with the title first, but struggled to find the melody and lyrics to go with it. Then one day I was staying in this place and the sink was very resonant. And so I started hitting the sink [to make] this beat... and then I went to the piano keyboard, and the song just landed in one go".
He also explained that "the song is about trying to find the astronaut in all of us, the person that can do amazing things". The singer later told Zoe Ball that the track had intergalactic origins, saying: "We've been trying to imagine what music might sound like on other planets, and try to imagine being those other acts, so we're not thinking of ourselves as being the band Coldplay from England", he explained.
Production
The song was produced by Max Martin, who the band called "a true wonder of the universe". During its first stages, the song was recorded at Hansa Studios, in Berlin, Germany. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Martin sent material regularly to the rest of the band, who were working together with Max Martin, but he later joined the group, and most of the track was recorded during this time, later being properly recorded at MixStar Studios, in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).