Coldplay ‘The Karate Kid’ Gets Live Performance With Ralph Macchio

The Karate Kid Ralph Macchio joined Coldplay on stage in Melbourne, Australia, for a performance of “The Karate Kid.” The full-circle moment arrived with a slick set-up from frontman Chris Martin, who prompted the actor’s appearance by telling the audience that he was losing his voice and needed some assistance on the record.

Macchio entered the stage to cheers from the audience but didn’t technically deliver a live singing performance himself. The actor lip-synced “The Karate Kid” while a pre-recorded vocal track of Martin performing played. Macchio’s appearance marks the second time Coldplay has performed the record, which appears on the deluxe edition of their latest album, Moon Music.

Coldplay debuted the track during a promotional concert with Sirius XM at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York, in early October. “When I sing ‘Daniel,’ I’m singing to that inner part of myself that needs to win the karate competition of life,” Martin explained at the show. “Do you see what I mean?”

On the chorus, Martin sings: “Whatever happens to everything that we go through/I see you got your new tattoo/I didn’t know someone felt that way too/Maybe we can share the rain/Maybe we can dance again/Maybe we can make the sky turn blue/Oh, Daniel knows how to make a dream/How to make a dream come true/Oh Daniel, could I be the one for you?”

Macchio appeared as Daniel LaRusso in the original 1984 Karate Kid film as well as the 1986 and 1989 sequels. In 2018, he returned to the action comedy-drama series Cobra Kai. Macchio will reprise his role in the upcoming film Karate Kid: Legends. The sixth film in the franchise marks the first since 2010’s The Karate Kid. The movie is aiming for a May 2025 release date, having been pushed back from its initial schedule window of December 2024.

“One of the interesting things with viewing the Karate Kid film is you’re following that kid. The camera’s on his shoulder, and you’re living every frame through Danny LaRusso,” Macchio told Rolling Stone in 2020. “When I showed the film to my kids, say 15 years ago, all of a sudden I viewed that film from the perspective of Mr. Miyagi because I was looking at this kid that would not listen, and he was less interesting to me than Miyagi was. So I gained a new perspective on the same — and it is something we’re bringing.”