One of Coldplay's early songs soared along to the lyrics of Yellow, but it seems that front man Chris Martin is more inspired by a little bit of red. Speaking to The Sun newspaper, the rocker reveals the Duchess of York galvanized him to pen his first song, aged 11. Chris said that people's obsession with Sarah's curvy figure "rather than what was happening in the world" bothered him, and he vented his frustration through music. "I was 11 years old when I wrote my first song," he said, describing the early effort as "terrible".
Though the song clearly represented Chris' first tentative steps into social and political consciousness, it somehow didn't catch on. "I kept it clean as you couldn't swear where I was from. I was singing very high, but no one was listening." As well as his first fumbling foray into song writing, the singer also shares some awkward experiences as a young man.
"Puberty came towards the end of the day. It seemed late. I was a terrible womaniser at 15 — no women were interested." Now happily married to Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris has put his teen angst behind him and recently compared being with the blonde actress to "winning the lottery". "It's a giant leap," he said during an interview on CBS, "from being a loser, to going out with an Oscar winner."