The Scientist

Martin wrote it after listening to George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. In Liverpool he found an old, out-of-tune piano and tried to play Harrison's Isn't It a Pity, could not manage it, and came upon the chord sequence instead. He asked for the recorder to be switched on. Asked about the song, he said it is just about girls. The liner notes of the album say The Scientist is Dan, a reference to Dan Keeling, the A&R man who signed the band. Audrey Riley arranged the strings with the band and played with eight other string players.

It was the second single in the UK, released on 11 November 2002, and reached number 10. In the US it came out in April 2003. Jamie Thraves directed the video, shot between 30 September and 3 October 2002, which runs in reverse. Martin had to learn to sing the song backward, which took him a month. It won three MTV Video Music Awards in 2003, and the band played the song at the ceremony at Radio City Music Hall on 28 August 2003. Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield called its falsetto finale cataclysmic, and Petridis said Martin's performance turns it into a showstopping anthem.