A Musing About Muse

I think it’s only fitting that I should write about a band I share a name with. Yes, that’s right, I want to talk about the band Muse in this entry. I want to point out before I begin that I did not choose my name in reference to the band; I chose it because I liked the idea of being a goddess-like type connected with music. So there you have it. I’m a bit more humble in real life. I promise.

Anyways, even though where I live is not exactly a hotbed for rock and roll talent, it does show the occasional music video in between shows and one of those videos, shown earlier this year was Supermassive Black Hole, off of Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations CD. For reasons unknown to me now, after hearing this song and liking it quite a bit, I went back a notch and started downloading everything I could off of Absolution, their previous CD. When I realized I pretty much liked EVERYTHING I was hearing and then sheepishly realized I had downloaded the entire album, I then bought the CD. (Look for another post soon on my thoughts about downloading music, when I think it is OK and when it isn’t.)

Muse’s music seems pretty complex and hard-edged. One song features a Rachmaninoff styled piano solo, and another is like a mini-rock opera, featuring different movements within the same song. Then there’s the case for the lyrics being somewhat dark as they explore things like death and conspiracies taking place within our governments. And yet this is also a band that wrote a beautiful song called Starlight, which could be their most mainstream love song style hit, except Matt Bellamy sounds like he is going on about being taken away in some kind of (space)ship, which will take him far from his loved ones.

Matt Bellamy – The Truth Is Out There

Matt Bellamy is the lead singer, guitar player, pianist and lyricist for Muse. One of the more interesting things about him, aside from composing the music for Muse and singing it an impressive range is that he also subscribes to a number of way out there ideas. Some are pretty routine, like life colonies existing on other planets, but another one he has gone on the record believing is the idea that September 11 took place with the American government knowing full well what was going to happen on that day either because they were directly part of the plot to have extremist Muslims hijack planes and slam them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon or at least knew of the plot and did nothing so they would have an excuse to invade the Middle East again.

The title “Knights of Cydonia” refers to a region of Mars which is believed to have at some point housed human life. The video is this futuristic spaghetti western style movie, filled with references to various science fiction films. See it here and be prepared to be blown away. It’s quite elaborate, and a bit over the top, but also quite awesome.



Here’s a video I found of Dom Howard, the band’s drummer, making fun of Slipknot, an over the top American post-metal band. The best bit of the video I think is Matt Bellamy’s cackling throughout it, though the bit with the sombrero comes awfully close.


Just watch it.