Rihanna Duet Made Coldplay’s Chris Martin Nervous

Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has revealed that it took him a while to finally muster up the courage to ask sexy singer Rihanna to sing on a track for his band's forthcoming fifth studio album, 'Mylo Xyloto.'

The UK native premiered the LP's second single, 'Paradise,' today (Sept. 12) and also confirmed that RiRi would feature on another 'Mylo Xyloto' song, 'Princess of China.' Rihanna, who is apparently Asian royalty now, duets with Martin on the track, but it apparently took the rocker quite some time to finally pop the question.

Martin had Rihanna in mind as the ideal guest vocalist all along, and told Britain's The Sun, "The album is designed as a whole piece. It has boy and girl lead characters and top of our list for the girl part was Rihanna ... but it took a while to pluck up the courage to ask her."

"We did a show in Las Vegas and I met her and said, 'Do you think there's any chance?' I was very Hugh Grant-like and spluttering about it," the Brit-born singer admitted.

"She has such an amazing voice and it's so different to mine. When the vocal happened I thought, 'Wow, you sound different' but I think that's also because she was singing a different song to what we are used to hearing from her and it is written by a bloke from Devon [England]," Chris added.

Can you blame the guy for being bashful? Martin was even dissed by his own full-time actress-part-time singer wife Gwyneth Paltrow, who has stated she would never sing with her husband's band.