Coldplay and creepy ravens: Game of Thrones in the wild

Game of Thrones continued to make its presence felt in the wide world this week with a pair of intriguing news stories.

First up, Northern Ireland is increasing its ever-growing tourism efforts by adding animatronic three-eyed ravens to the already impressive Westeros-flavored displays Tourism Ireland has been putting up over the past few weeks. The ravens flocked to Belfast, where they perched at City Hall, presumably making a lot of politicians very nervous. (Dark wings, dark words, after all.) Tourism Ireland CEO Niall Gibbons says that their 2015 campaign “is a fun and innovative way to bring the destination to the attention of Game of Thrones fans worldwide. They will see these ads, spiking their curiosity about the landscapes and locations featured in the series and inspiring them to come and explore them for themselves.”

Meanwhile, Coldplay—whose drummer, Will Champion, was present at the bloodbath known as the Red Wedding—is apparently getting into that whole “writing songs about Game of Thrones” business on their is album. Titled A Head Full of Dreams, the album will reportedly feature songs such as “Rastafarian Targaryen,” “Red Wedding,” and the rather straightforward “I’m a Real Bastard.” Lead singer Chris Martin has also compared the album, the band’s seventh, to the seventh Harry Potter book. Appropriately enough, there’s also a song called “Voldemort” on the new album, so it seems the band is looking to fantasy fiction for inspiration, at least on the surface. “Rastafarian Targaryen” is one hell of a title, though. Is it reggae-influenced? Is it perhaps an interpretation of the Targaryen dynasty through Cthulu mythos? And the one-million gold dragon question: is it somehow both?

• Published on 05/16/2015 at 4:00 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:04 PM CDT