Coldplay's new album X&Y is breaking sales records before it has even been released, but frontman Chris Martin told Canada AM he is skeptical of his success.

"Maybe we're as big as the Bangles, but not as big as the Beatles," he joked.

X&Y set a new record in pre-order sales at Amazon.co.uk, where it has held the top sales ranking since March. The album is set to be released in both Britain and Canada on Tuesday. The band's growing popularity has made some music critics call Coldplay the next U2.

Martin is quick to show that he doesn't take his fame seriously, and believes Coldplay's intensely personal music is fed by his experience as an ordinary human being.

"Well, as much as we're in a famous band and stuff, we also have our real lives, and we live on the same planet as everyone else," Martin said.

"So everything that's happened in the world in the last three years has gone in there, and then all of our relationships and our friendships."

The most prominent of these relationships is Martin's marriage to Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow, and the birth of their daughter, Apple. Martin has become a favourite subject of the paparazzi, but is determined to keep his personal life private.

"Well, she's public in one way and we're public in one way, but we don't really like to be public together. Because we really are just two little humans in the same dilemma as everybody else."

Instead, Martin prefers the attention to be on Coldplay's new album. Expectations are high. The band's previous album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, sold 10 million copies worldwide. When X&Y's release was delayed last year, stock of the band's label EMI dropped. But Martin is proud of the new album, which took 18 months to record.

"If our album isn't the best album ever, it's not for want of trying. I understand underneath it all, I'm just a [fallible] guy, and sometimes you can't rise above the fact that you're just an ordinary human. But there's no harm in trying to do something better than that. But whether you succeed or not is not for you to decide."

For Coldplay, anything less than success seems impossible.