“I was like ‘Wow, Coldplay were definitely listening to Radiohead and trying to make their version of it’": Porter Robinson says that he only recently discovered that Coldplay used to sound a bit like Radiohead

Their creative paths might have diverged significantly in the intervening years, but there was a time, back in the early noughties, when Coldplay were viewed as Radiohead wannabes. But this came as news to Porter Robinson - who would have been just seven when Coldplay’s debut album, Parachutes, was released - who says that he only got into both bands and spotted the similarities when he hit 30.

Robinson, of course, has been in the public eye since he was a teenager, and was initially known as something of an electronic music prodigy. Musically, it might be argued that he’s recently gone in the opposite direction to Chris Martin and co; after struggling with his mental health, he returned with a new album, Nurture, in 2017, which saw him pivot to a more organic and guitar-based style.

This trend continued on 2024’s SMILE!:D, and it was while playing an unreleased demo for one of the songs on this album on the Tape Notes podcast - Is There Really No Happiness - that the subject of Coldplay and Radiohead came up.

Robinson admits that it may come as a surprise that he was initially immune to Coldplay’s charms given that “every EDM artist has like ‘fake’ Coldplay vocals in their music,” but says that he’s “grown to love them so dearly” in the past three years.

“I had never really listened to Radiohead either, and so I got to consume the first few Radiohead albums and the first few Coldplay albums within like a week of each other,” continues Robinson, “and I was like ‘Wow, like Coldplay were definitely listening to Radiohead and trying to make their version of it.’"

This led him to wonder if anyone had noticed these similarities at the time. Which, of course, they had.

“I found tons of forum debates from 2004 from people saying, you know Radiohead fans being like, ‘Coldplay's trash.’”

Robinson, though, was pleased to discover that, when interviewed around that time, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke declined to say anything negative about Chris Martin and Coldplay, possibly because he knew that, having become so big, it was inevitable that other bands would follow in their stylistic footsteps.

“I think lots of artists tend to resent the people that get inspired by them cuz you're like ‘Oh you've just done my exact thing but you failed to stop yourself from doing all the stuff I deemed too cheesy,’” admits Robinson. “I've felt that way before with some stuff and I found it really admirable for Thom Yorke to not take the bait and to be like ‘you know what, I'm not going to say anything rude about this guy.’ Every artist knows that they themselves are doing it too - any honest artist knows that they're ripping off their heroes and their heroes would probably resent what they're doing.”

Porter Robinson on Coldplay vs Radiohead + Unreleased Demos for "Is There Really No Happiness?" - YouTube

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On the subject of the demo for Is There Really No Happiness that he’s playing, Robinson says that it was Coldplay’s breakthrough hit in particular that he drew inspiration from.“You can kind of hear the attempt at like the ‘Yellow’ guitar here,” he says.

You can listen to the full interview on the Tape Notes website.