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Coldplay's music has become blander, but Radiohead have kept it interesting

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If you felt like Coldplay got more boring over time, it's not just A Rush of Blood to the Head - you may be right! A UK scientist has shown the bland band showed less 'harmonic daring' as they became part of the pop mainstream. However, Radiohead didn't fall prey to the same blandness Creep, the researcher says, maintaining high harmonic diversity in their songs over time. The researcher said 'OK Computer', and set about analysing recorded music using 'computational musicology', allowing him to look at variation in features such as rhythm and harmony over time, and the overall diversity of artists’ back catalogue. He looked at three alternative rock bands - R.E.M., Radiohead and Coldplay - and also investigated Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly and Kirsty MacColl for comparison. Coldplay got blander, but Radiohead did not, he found, while the Shiny Happy People at R.E.M. simply stayed the same.

Journal/conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research: Paper

Organisation/s: Durham University, UK

Funder: No funding has been received for this article.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Recording Artist Career Comparison Through Audio Content Analysis

The careers of music artists can be studied over many recorded releases through computational methods acting on audio files. The present study focusses on music from three alternative rock bands, R.E.M., Radiohead and Coldplay; there are also control cases from the recordings of Patsy Cline, Buddy Holly and Kirsty MacColl. This is a new approach to comparative analysis of recorded music within the domain of computational musicology, looking at variation over time, and the diversity of artists’ oeuvre; are there aging effects for bands, and who is the most diverse artist with respect to rhythm, timbre and harmony?

OK Computer- Coldplay have shown less “harmonic daring” as they became part of the pop mainstream. In contrast, Radiohead have maintained high harmonic diversity in their body of work over time. These insights come from new comparative computational analysis of major musical releases across the careers of six artists. It includes statistical measures of variation over time and the diversity of artists’ recorded output. These approaches offer new insights into music as an evolving cultural activity, the authors said.

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