It’s Tuesday! I have a song and a beautiful story to go with it.

This song came into my life when I was in college. The band was popular at the time, but I didn’t listen to them or know who they were until a friend them introduced to me. She loved this band so much and I didn’t quite get it.

A few years later when I studied abroad, I met yet another women, who was in my cohort, who loved the band too. Since we were on the same study abroad trip, I had time to sit and listen to their music. During that time their album X & Y just came out and I found their music becoming the soundtrack to that time of my life.

Then when I came back to the states, I started to explore and listen to their older music. Coldplay is one of my favorite bands and their music has a lot of significant meaning for me because it reminds me of that trip abroad, my last year of college, film school, significant friendships from that time and a serious relationship that I had.

Their music has slowly resurface into my life recently. One of their songs was recently covered in Mandarin for the Crazy, Rich Asians Soundtrack. It’s nice to see more movies telling more diverse stories with more diverse casts. I was drawn to the industry to tell stories that would bring people together through understanding of experiences. As a person of color, I know that representation is important because I know how it has impacted me, specifically in high school and college. There is not a lot of positive representation of my culture outside of negative stereotypes. I also know the effects it has on children of color from academic research, plus and have I seen those effects first hand when I hear how some children dream versus other children I have worked with through community service.

Crazy, Rich Asians is not only a movie that has representation for Asians, it also has a song the reclaims the negative connotations that exist with the color yellow. The director John Chu wrote a letter to Chris Martin (the lead singer of Coldplay) which asked him for permission to use the song “Yellow” in the movie. He wrote the letter from his heart and spoke to the importance of the song for him when he was growing up.

Here is the letter from the Hollywood Reporter, followed by the video and lyrics.

Yellow – Coldplay