Martin's songwriting ruined by sleeping pills

Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has admitted that he often falls asleep when writing songs.

The singer told Rolling Stone that he gets inspiration to write new material in the middle of the night, but finds it a struggle because he usually takes sleeping pills beforehand.

He said: "My problem is that I often take a sleeping pill in order to go to sleep, but then I get excited about a song, so I go and play music, and then it kind of kicks in halfway through.

"I have a little corner where nobody can hear me in the middle of the night, and that's where I spend most of the night times.

"'I wake up the next morning and find these strange notes to myself... I'm a little bit ashamed about it."

Martin added that knowing his wife Gwyneth Paltrow used to date Brad Pitt meant he would never become complacent, saying: "You've got to be hungry. If your wife went out with Brad Pitt, you'd want to prove yourself, you know what I mean?"