My Favorite Song: Gwyneth Paltrow says ex Chris Martin’s music helped her cope with her dad’s death
After 2014’s conscious uncoupling, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin remain some of Hollywood’s friendliest exes — so it’s only natural that she included a Coldplay hit on her list for My Favorite Song with John Benjamin Hickey. The actress found solace in the band’s … Continued
Gwyneth Paltrow
After 2014’s conscious uncoupling, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin remain some of Hollywood’s friendliest exes — so it’s only natural that she included a Coldplay hit on her list for My Favorite Song with John Benjamin Hickey.
The actress found solace in the band’s single Everything’s Not Lost after her father, producer and director Bruce Paltrow, died in 2002.
“He wrote this song before I met him, and I think another reason it’s sad for me is my father had just died when this album came out, and we used to listen to it kind of on repeat,” says Paltrow, 43. “This album was kind of getting my brother and I through that death.”
Three weeks later, she met Martin, “when I was fanning out on A Rush of Blood to the Head,” she jokes, and the stars married in 2003.
“I love that,” says Hickey, 52. “That this was in your life before the actual person was. That’s beautiful.”
Paltrow also praises the songwriting skills of the father of her two children, recalling how he penned Paradise, off Coldplay’s 2011 album Mylo Xyloto, in mere minutes.
“This one time I was making dinner, we sat down for dinner in London, and the kids were in bed, and he was telling me that someone had asked him to write a song for somebody else. And then all of a sudden he got a really weird look in his eye and he was like, ‘I’ll be right back,’ and he went up to the piano and literally three to five minutes later he said, ‘Will you come up and listen to this?'” she says.” He had written this song called Paradise, from beginning to end, with all the lyrics, in like three minutes.”
The Goop founder says she still goes to “a lot” of Coldplay concerts with her children but reveals that 11-year-old daughter Apple fan-girls over Taylor Swift. (“She’s very savvy, she keeps her clothes on, she writes her music, she has good values. She’s a good girl,” Paltrow gushes of the pop princess.)
As for her BFF Beyonce, Paltrow admits that she knew Queen Bey had something special in the works before releasing her visual album in 2013.
“She played me a bunch of the videos before it dropped. I had been with her a lot when she had been working on it. I’m not sure I knew … oh, everybody stand by, but I knew kind of the general plan and what she was going to do. I knew there was going to be a surprise,” she says.
Of Drunk in Love, Paltrow says, “I get chills from this song. It just makes you want to move.”
See all of Paltrow’s picks below:
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Favorite Songs
HAPPY: Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above by CSS
LOVE: Song for Zula by Phosphorescent
ROCK & ROLL: No Cars Go by Arcade Fire
HIGH SCHOOL: Gangsta Gangsta by N.W.A and Buffalo Stance by Neneh Cherry
SEXY: Wishing Well by Terence Trent D’Arby
DANCE: Drunk in Love by Beyonce
DUET: Made in America by Jay-Z and Kanye West
SAD: Everything’s Not Lost by Coldplay
CITY: Lights by Journey and A Heart in New York by Simon and Garfunkel
R&B: Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart by Alicia Keys
COUNTRY: Angel from Montgomery by Bonnie Raitt
Gwyneth Paltrow’s interview with John Benjamin Hickey airs April 20 at 8 am ET on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy (Ch. 102).
For a free 30-day trial, check out http://www.siriusxm.com/freeTrial.
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