Songfacts®:

• The message of this song is that everybody has a right to be themselves, whether they are black or white, gay or straight, or anywhere in between.
  
  We'll all be free to fall in love
  With who we want and say
  Yeah, yeah, yeah
  People of the pride
  
  Coldplay frontman Chris Martin called the track "a big angry gay metal anthem."
• Coldplay started the song in the Viva La Vida era back in 2008 but struggled for years to finish it. Chris Martin told NME they eventually drew inspiration from the 2020 Black Lives Matter and Gay Pride marches where people said "this situation is ridiculous."
• The first verse is a slightly altered version of a Coldplay demo named "The Man Who Swears," dating from 2008. They added the second verse and bridge (there's no chorus) 12 years later. "I think it's our 'This situation is ridiculous' song," Martin said. "We're quite polite about it, though, as opposed to saying, 'You f---ing arseholes!' But this is about human politics."
• The anthemic "People Of The Pride" segues between spacey chords and cranked-up industrial guitars. "That's our Rammstein cover that isn't actually a cover," Martin laughed to NME.
• Bill Rahko, Oscar Holter and Max Martin produced the song. Chris Martin told Apple Music how Max Martin (no relation) helped shape it sonically. "The way we had it before, it sounded a little bit old-fashioned, almost like glam rock," he said. "What Max managed to do was take the energy and layer in a way which preserved that feel but also made it sound very modern at the same time."
• Australia-born and LA-based singer-songwriter Sam Sparro gets credited because the song samples his 2008 hit "Black and Gold." The sample is apt in two respects:
  
  1. Coldplay recorded the song for Music of the Spheres, a space-themed concept album based around an imaginary solar system. "Black and Gold" came from Sparro looking up to the stars and seeing himself as a minuscule part of this infinite universe.
  
  2. Sam Sparro is openly gay.
• Directed by Paul Dugdale, the song's music video mixes live footage from Coldplay's October 2021 performance at Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena with dystopian manga-inspired animation.