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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →A 2025 study of recorded music found that Radiohead was more harmonically diverse than Coldplay, while Coldplay moved increasingly toward the pop mainstream over its career. It did not measure whether Coldplay is “boring” or prove that new songs duplicate old ones: those are interpretations in the news headline, not findings established by the study summary.
What did the researchers compare?
Nick Collins of Durham University authored “Recording artist career comparison through audio content analysis,” published in Royal Society Open Science in 2025. The university’s summary, republished by Phys.org, describes analysis of recorded audio across artists’ careers—not just lyrics or sheet music. The features discussed include rhythm, tempo, percussion, keys and chords, as well as timbre, or sound quality.
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The summary names Coldplay, Radiohead, R.E.M., Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly and Kirsty MacColl. Its question is which of Coldplay, Radiohead or R.E.M. changed their music most over the years. The findings highlighted in the summary are comparisons across particular musical dimensions, not a single overall score of artistic change.
What did the study say about Coldplay?
Harmonic diversity
The summary says Radiohead was consistently more harmonically diverse than Coldplay. Harmonic diversity concerns keys and chords; this result does not establish that Radiohead was more varied in every aspect of its sound.
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Movement toward the pop mainstream
The summary says Coldplay became increasingly part of the pop mainstream over time. It quotes Collins as saying, “Coldplay shows a downwards trend in their harmonic daring as they increasingly become part of the pop mainstream.” That is a claim about a trend in harmonic daring, not a verdict on the quality or appeal of the band’s music.
Other musical dimensions
The analysis also discusses rhythm, tempo, percussion and timbre. The summary specifically cautions against treating the harmonic comparison as a result for every dimension: Radiohead was more harmonically diverse, but not necessarily more diverse in timbre. It also describes R.E.M. as generally the least adventurous in musical style.
Does the study prove Coldplay’s new songs sound like its old ones?
No such conclusion is established in the accessible summary. A finding that Coldplay moved toward the pop mainstream and showed a downward trend in harmonic daring is narrower than saying each new song sounds like an old one. The PerthNow headline, “Coldplay are officially boring, according to researchers, with their new songs sounding like their old ones,” uses a subjective judgment and a broader interpretation than the findings documented in the university summary.
The study summary does not report whether listeners find the band boring. It also does not supply a numerical effect size or sample count that can be used to quantify the comparison.
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What can and can’t be concluded?
- Supported by the summary: Radiohead was consistently more harmonically diverse than Coldplay, and Coldplay became increasingly part of the pop mainstream over time.
- Not established by those findings: that Coldplay is objectively boring, that every newer song repeats an older one, or that Radiohead is more diverse on every musical dimension.
The accessible summary does not specify the complete recording dataset, selection rules, full computational definitions or robustness checks. Those methodological details therefore cannot be assessed from the summary alone. The published paper is identified as “Recording artist career comparison through audio content analysis,” Royal Society Open Science (2025), DOI 10.1098/rsos.241647.
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