Coldplay are officially boring, according to researchers, with their new songs sounding like their old ones

There is no doubting their massive popularity and incredible longevity, but science has now backed up what critics have long taken issue with them over — Coldplay are boring.

Researchers reckon the band’s sound has changed little over their 28 years, having become less “harmonically daring”.

It’s given music experts more ammunition to suggest that Coldplay’s new songs sound a lot like their old ones.

Durham University boffins compared the band’s catalogue of songs with REM, Radiohead, Buddy Holly, Kirsty MacColl and Patsy Cline.

They analysed variety and how songs differed over time, including rhythm, tempo, percussion, keys and chords.

It was found that while REM were the least adventurous, Coldplay had become staid as their fame grew.

Radiohead’s albums contained more variety.

“Coldplay shows a downwards trend in their harmonic daring as they increasingly become part of the pop mainstream,” Professor Nick Collins wrote in journal Royal Society Open Science.

“Radiohead maintain a high diversity of harmonic language, while their timbral‐rhythmic variety also falls off a little.”

Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has admitted in the past that the band — which also includes Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman and Will Champion — are “very easy targets” with it having become a running joke that they’re “vanilla”.

One hardly believes that the criticism, whether warranted or not, worries the band too much!

Having formed in the UK in 1997, Coldplay have become one of the world’s most successful band’s of all time, selling more than 100 million albums and still playing to sold out concerts and topping charts across the globe.

In November 2023, they played two packed out concerts at Optus Stadium in Perth as part of their Music of the Spheres world tour.