Chris Martin Calls Rihanna “The Frank Sinatra Of Our Generation”

Christina Lee | June 25, 2016 9:38 am
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Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has some high praise for Rihanna. In a recent interview, he called his past collaborator “the Frank Sinatra of our generation.” And he was quick to explain why comparing her to the iconic baritone made sense, and while using very specific terminology.

“She can turn anything into gold with that voice,” he says to The Guardian. “Here’s the thing: if you speak to a good singing teacher about great opera singers, they will talk about consistency of tone. Or there’s a book by Alfred Tomatis about why some people like certain people’s voices and other people hate them, like Bob Dylan or me or whoever, some people say, ‘Oh, I hate that voice’, so there’s a thing about people’s frequency responses – what they are pleased by. Rihanna has this thick tone, so it’s very hard to annoy anybody.

“It’s like a beautifully squeezed tube of toothpaste. When you think of Rihanna’s voice you think of this whole, rich thing, solid like a tree trunk. Drake is pretty similar. But Rihanna’s voice is just delicious for your ear. Sinatra had the same thing; anything he sang sounded pleasing to most people.”

Coldplay featured Rihanna in its 2012 single “Princess of China,” off Mylo Xyloto.

Chris also defends his love for Mike Posner‘s “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” (“I want to write a song as good as that”) and Drake’s “One Dance” (“[Those songs] just get me”). Read the interview in its entirety at The Guardian.

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