Most fan voices to feature on a music single

More than 120,000 fans of Coldplay (UK) in “204 countries, states and territories” lent their voice to the band’s new single “One World”. The track will feature on their Moon Music album – the second volume of Music of the Spheres (2021) – scheduled for release in May 2024. Fans will also be able to request a credit in a digital booklet.

The invitation went out to their 25.3 million followers on Instagram, and on the band’s official website, on 2 November 2023 with the instructions: “All you have to do is record yourself singing “Ahhhhh” for a few seconds at oneworld.coldplay.com. You can either copy the note on the site, or sing a G or C in any octave.” By the time submissions closed on 13 November, tens of thousands of fans had taken the opportunity to make their voices heard on “One World”,

“One World” was first heard on Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour, at the Estádio do Morumbi in São Paulo, Brazil, on 18 March 2023, and 10 days later at the Estádio Olímpico Nilton Santos in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the final date of the tour’s South American leg. On both occasions, frontman Chris Martin instructed the 70,000-plus revellers in attendance to belt out “One” or hum a C note, with the aim of bringing together 1 million voices on the song, to be recorded at selected venues on the tour. After the Rio concert, however, “One World” mysteriously disappeared from the setlist – only for the ambitious project to resurface online some seven months later.

The record for the most performers/vocal contributions to a musical recording (single song), meanwhile, is 300,000, achieved by Little Lang Liquor and the reality TV show The Voice of China on 29 September 2018.