"Christmas Lights" is a song by British alternative rock band Coldplay released on 1 December 2010, as a digital download single. According to lead singer Chris Martin, it was written in December 2008. The morning after he began work on the single, he performed a segment of the still in-progress song for journalist Steve Kroft during an interview for the newsmagazine program 60 Minutes that was aired on February 8, 2009. Described by the band as "a mid-tempo number" in the key of G major, "Christmas Lights" was released to positive reviews and later named one of the best Christmas songs of the 21st century by Cleveland. The cover art is by Yu Matsuoka Pol. Release and promotion The single's release date was announced through the official Coldplay website on 24 November 2010. A countdown in minutes and seconds to 1 December 8pm GMT, appeared on the homepage of the website, accompanied by an animated GIF of the album art. Coldplay released three 'making-of' videos through their iTunes Ping page, showing the creation of the music video. Another video was also released on their website, giving a preview of the music video and the song itself, plus more 'making-of' footage. It was originally thought that "Christmas Lights" would be a song from the band's fifth studio album Mylo Xyloto, but this was confirmed not to be the case by Coldplay's official fan-question answer system The Oracle on two occasions. For the week ending 18 December 2010, "Christmas Lights" both debuted and peaked at position number 25 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and position number 12 on Billboard'''s Hot Digital Songs chart. A live recording of the song was also featured as the closer track on the band's Live from Spotify London EP, released exclusively on Spotify in December 2016. A physical release of "Christmas Lights" was released on 4 December 2020, to mark the song's tenth anniversary. It was made available in a limited-edition blue 7-inch vinyl with "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as its B-side. It reached number 1 in the UK's Official Vinyl Singles Chart in December 2020, and was the 15th best-selling vinyl single of 2021. Music video The discussions of plans for the song's music video started about one month before its release. The original plan was to film a simple video at Oxford Street, as the place is mentioned in the