COLDPLAY - MARTIN FOUGHT COPYCAT COLDPLAY TEMPTATION

COLDPLAY frontman CHRIS MARTIN battled the temptation to plagiarise others' work when writing tracks for the band's new album X+Y.

The CLOCKS rocker, whose long-awaited third album with Coldplay is released next month (JUN05), found it difficult to generate original material but did find he now has the life experience to write better lyrics.

Martin says, "The things that changed are, we have more things to sing about and more people to plagiarise.

"But the way we operate is still pretty similar: we go down one path at a canter then realise that really we want a bit more excitement than this - which might sound extraordinary, because I don't think people associate Coldplay with excitement necessarily - but, believe me, we could sound a lot more bland."