It could only have happened to Coldplay…

More than that, though, it could only have happened at that point in time. The music industry hadn’t yet been fully hit with the revolutionary disruption of the internet, but it was already a very different place from the one the band had expected to step into – for other reasons.

Ringtones were big business in 2005. Nowadays, you can set your smartphone to play whatever you like quite easily. Back then, ringtones were big business. Getting your phone to play something other than the sleepy digital norm meant shelling out money. It was being talked about as becoming more lucrative than pop music. No wonder then that someone tried to cross the streams…

It was also the era where pop hits were secured by huge television campaigns – the beginning of reality shows that got the public invested in a character for months before sending their first record out into the ether. Coldplay had already met this when In My Place had been beaten to number one in the UK by Darius – a singer from a TV talent show.

Crazy Frog was the perfect storm of ringtone mania and constant television bombardment – albeit in the form of standard adverts rather than a reality show. The man, or rather frog in question, was an animated character that was responsible for the most popular ringtone of the age, that was seemingly pushed in every ad break on every channel.

His masters decided to give pop music a go with a cover of Axel F, which was released on the same day as Speed Of Sound. And the rest, as they say…

For anyone fortunate enough to not know what on earth Crazy Frog even is, he is of course immortalised on YouTube here (proceed at your own risk!).

Clearly, if they were going to compete in this environment, there would have to be a big gesture for the first single of the next album….

Luckily, painting themselves blue and donning a motorbike helmet was not required.

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