The A Head Full of Dreams album finds Chris Martin in a more positive space after the heartbreak he wrote about on Ghost Stories, which followed the demise of his marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow. "It's all true," the Coldplay frontman told Rolling Stone. "It's about love and acceptance and embracing what happens to you. It's quite a hippie album. All of our records were a journey to get to this one."

Both the title track and "Up & Up" were debuted by Coldplay during a Tidal live-stream show on November 21, 2015 in Los Angeles.

Chris Martin told Entertainment Weekly that this was his "favorite Coldplay song ever." He added, "It's what I always dreamed of singing."

It seemed that Coldplay's run of UK chart-topping albums would stall when A Head Full Of Dreams debuted at #2 on the UK Albums Chart behind Adele's 25. However two months later, following the band's Super Bowl halftime performance, it surged 10-1 on the chart dated February 14, 2016, to give Chris Martin and his colleagues a straight run of seven #1 albums since Parachutes in 2000.

The song's music video sees the band riding BMX bikes through the streets of Mexico City and to a concert at the city's Foro Sol venue. Shot on Super 8mm during Coldplay's Latin American stadium tour in April 2016, the clip was directed by American director and photographer James Marcus Haney, who also filmed the "Birds" visual for the group.

The video starts with a powerful political speech taken from Charlie Chaplin's film The Great Dictator, which was played before each show on Coldplay's A Head Full of Dreams world tour. The same clip was also sampled by Paolo Nutini on his single "Iron Sky."