Hip To Be Square (One)

We've spent three decades laughing at soft rock and its fluffy-haired fans. So why is it suddenly OK to like it again?

You could argue that the soft rock revival has been with us since the turn of the century. The epic piano ballads of Coldplay and their opportunistic brethren may have their roots in Radiohead's more elegiac moments, but over the years their surfaces have been sanded down and glossed until they sound like something else entirely.

One online encyclopedia's definition claims "soft rock is usually sung with higher-pitched vocals, the lyrics tend to be non-confrontational, focusing in very general language on themes like love and relationships, and the genre tends to make heavy use of pianos", which more or less precisely describes Keane.

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