Adele still hasn’t confirmed whether she’ll be performing at February 12′s Grammy Awards — nor have Lady Gaga or Kanye West, for that matter — but Rihanna just told the world she’ll be ending her kushy vacation to play music’s big night. “My friends @ColdPlay and I will be sharing the stage for a performance at this years Annual Grammy Awards! #BONKERS,” she tweeted yesterday. Obviously her little typo bugged whoever runs Chris Martin and Co.’s Twitter, because the band’s retweet corrected the “p” in the band’s name to lowercase.

“I’m competitive with anyone who writes a good song — I don’t care if it’s a band or solo artist or whoever,” Chris Martin told SPIN this past fall. “If ‘Someone Like You’ comes up by Adele, part of my brain loves it and another part is like, ‘Shit. I’ve got to come up with something better than that.’ Even with Rihanna’s new song ‘We Found Love,’ I thought, ‘Well, why the fuck didn’t I think of that?’ It really drives you.” Martin did wind up recruiting Rihanna for Mylo Xyloto‘s “Princess of China.”

So far the list of confirmed performers includes Paul McCartney, Kelly Clarkson and Jason Aldean, Foo Fighters, Bruno Mars, Nicki Minaj, and Taylor Swift.

Beyoncé, pop’s reigning queen of old-school glamor in an age of social media salespeople. “Countdown,” the happy, not-so-crazy, most-definitely-in-love standout from Sasha Fierce’s current album, 4. The Roots, “the greatest band in late night” (and so much more). With a lineup like that, it would be hard for Jimmy Fallon to go wrong.

And he didn’t, really — Beyoncé’s performance, which aired Friday night, was ebullient and bewitching, the Roots’ boisterous live backing and Queen B’s offhand smiles only improving a great tune. But as Consequence of Sound points out, Late Night With Jimmy Fallon weirdly tried to pass off the song as fresh when it was clearly pre-recorded. Anyone who’s been watching B’s growing womb would surmise this performance must’ve taken place around the same time as Mrs. Jay-Z’s Roots-bolstered take on “Best Thing I Never Had,” which aired on Fallon back in July. But for some reason the show makes it look as if guest Chris Martin of Coldplay, who we know was in New York City last week for Saturday Night Live, was also right there in the audience during Beyoncé’s four-month-old performance. Hmm.

One thing is clear, though: Martin wasn’t channeling his friend Beyoncé’s moves on SNL.

Coldplay are doing something a little bit quirky. No, giving their fifth album a cryptically exotic title doesn’t count. Days after Chris Martin weirdly hung up on a radio interviewer who asked about his totally newsworthy wife, Rolling Stone reports that the British rockers have opted not to make Mylo Xyloto available to Spotify, Rhapsody, and other streaming services. The band did allow iTunes to stream songs from Mylo last week, and so far the band hasn’t said why they’re limiting the digital release of their latest disc to download-only services.

Still, Coldplay’s latest looks poised to debut at the top of the U.S. album charts by a healthy margin, according to Billboard. Mylo is reportedly expected to sell no fewer than 440,000 copies by October 30. That would give Coldplay their third No. 1 album, joining 2005′s X&Y (737,000 sold its first week) and 2008′s Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (721,000). The predicted sales number would also mark the biggest sales week for a rock album since U2′s No Line on the Horizon sold 484,000 in its first week more than two years ago, Billboard notes. Only Lady Gaga’s Born This Way (1.1 million) and Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV can boast higher opening-week sales in 2011.

In other Coldplay news, Dutch filmmaker Anton Corbijn directed a live Web broadcast of Coldplay’s concert performance in Madrid on Wednesday night. Corbijn’s credits include music videos for U2′s “One” and Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box,” and he’s also responsible for such movies as The American and Control. Coldplay also took some time to stop by BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge today for a cover of Mylo guest star Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” which you can hear here. Wait a second: How could a world with xylophone toes ever be a “hopeless place”?

In a recent CBS interview, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin compared himself to a cartoon panda, but in the new video for swooping, R&B-tinged Mylo Xyloto anthem “Paradise,” he and his bandmates set their sights even bigger, dressing up as the largest land animal. Filmed in South Africa by director Mat Whitecross, who has also worked on several previous Coldplay videos (“Violet Hill,” “Christmas Lights”, “Lovers in Japan”), the clip gives us a brief glimpse of some graffiti reminiscent of Whitecross’s recent video for fellow Mylo Xyloto cut “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall.” But mostly it’s about a guy in an elephant costume, looking for his band so they can leave the savanna and go on tour. Maybe this is how you know Martin and wife Gwyneth Paltrow have two young kids? There’s probably a lot of Babar in their lives.

Martin, bassist Guy Berryman, drummer Will Champion, and guitarist Jonny Buckland haven’t only been running around with trunks on their faces. They’ve also tapped Dutch DJ/producer Fedde Le Grand for a massive house remix of “Paradise,” which you can hear via Beatport. To get your own personalized Mylo Xyloto artwork based on your initials, head on over to the band’s official site. The album is due out on October 24.

This is the sound of Coldplay collaborating with Billboard Hot 100 champion Rihanna. Perhaps more significantly, it’s the sound of Chris Martin singing about ending a relationship with Rihanna.

“You really hurt me,” Martin and RiRi repeat in harmony at the swelling apex of the track. With brash synth squiggles and a lofty, wordless hook, it’s catchy and represents another appealing shift in direction for a group that already refuses to keep repeating the same musical formula — though it’s still more inoffensive than inspiring. Ask us again after a few months of constant Top 40 radio exposure, though, once pop-rock Stockholm syndrome sets in. Maybe then we’ll understand what Martin’s “favorite bit” from the next week’s Mylo Xyloto — the bit that reduced Mr. Gwyneth Paltrow to a “Hugh Grant-like” stammer — has to do with China. The better to market to our future economic overlords, perhaps?. Mylo Xyloto is due October 25.