Viva la Vida

The title comes from Frida Kahlo's last painting, in which the words are inscribed on a melon wedge. Martin saw it at the Frida Kahlo museum in Mexico and added it to his list of titles. He said the melody came at about two in the morning, the chord sequence appeared in about ten minutes, and the following year was spent recording it. It went through about fifty-five different styles. Buckland said he wrote around fifteen riffs and none survived. The finished version came together when they found a church-bell sound for the chorus, and Martin said that was it. Davide Rossi arranged and played the strings alone. The song is in A-flat major at 138 beats per minute.

The narrator is a king who has lost his kingdom, and one reading takes it as Louis XVI in the French Revolution. Martin described the image of a king in his castle with everyone banging on the door, and half-jokingly said it was a love song. Parlophone first asked the band not to release it, arguing it did not sound like Coldplay, but Champion insisted. It appeared on the iTunes Store in May 2008 as part of the album pre-order and went on sale on its own later that month. It topped the UK Singles Chart from 12 June and became their first number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the first number one in both countries for a British act since Rod Stewart's Maggie May in 1971. It won Song of the Year at the 2009 Grammys, and FC Barcelona took it up as a club anthem from the 2008-09 season.

Live and legal

The band played it live for the first time at the MTV Movie Awards on 1 June 2008, and performed it at the 2009 Grammys on 8 February 2009 in a medley with Lost+, with Jay-Z. In December 2008 Joe Satriani sued, saying the song incorporated parts of his If I Could Fly. Coldplay denied it. The case was dismissed with each side paying its own costs. Cat Stevens also said it was similar to his Foreigner Suite but that he did not think they had copied it on purpose.