History Headscratchers / Muse

** Well, this troper started listening to Radiohead after Muse, and when I heard "My Iron Lung" I understood why people would make the comparison; it sounds not entirely unlike Muse's sound circa ''Origin of Symmetry'' or ''Absolution''. (And, from the alternate perspective, a few specific Muse songs sound a lot like Radiohead songs; the resemblance between "Soldier's Poem" and "No Surprises" is striking.) But it turned out that that song wasn't representative of ''The Bends'' in general, so I'm back to scratching my head.

** I can definitely hear the similarities. Muse often sounds a lot like some of the stuff on ''The Bends'' and ''Music/OKComputer''. Of course, any resemblance has been blasted away since ''Music/KidA''.

** I picture Muse as a more theatrical Radiohead. Seriously.

* How the hell did Matt manage to sing so high on ''Micro Cuts''? Don't get me wrong, it sounds awesome, but HOLY FUCK. Did he get an elephant to stand on his testicles or something? I don't think the average woman would be able to sing that high.
** Matt's vocal cords are quite a bit smaller than an average man's; hence, he is able to reach higher notes than the average man. There may have been some studio trickery, but I've seen him do it live... so it may just be that he's awesome.

* I think we're all a little confused on this one. If Matt has ElmuhFuddSyndwome while speaking, how come it doesn't afflict him while singing? Is it the speed he delivers it that allows him to have time to articulate? Or is it something else?

* I think we're all a little confused on this one. If Matt has ElmuhFuddSyndwome while speaking, how come it doesn't afflict him while singing? Is it the speed he delivers it that allows him to have time to articulate? Or is it something else?

*** And, on Muse's end, they sound more like Music/{{Queen}} than like Radiohead now.

*** Matt previously noted that Futurism was too hard to sing live, hence only performing it once in the 'Origin' period. He knew it would be a fan favorite, and hence left it off the album. When the band finally brought it back a year or two ago, to astonishment from fans...and proceeded to nail it. His years of improved vocals clearly helped. :D

** Matt's vocal chords are quite a bit smaller than an average man's; hence, he is able to reach higher notes than the average man. There may have been some studio trickery, but I've seen him do it live... so it may just be that he's awesome.

*** It goes beyond that: Bellamy actually told an interviewer that a doctor once examined him, and proclaimed that he has the vocal cords of a woman.

* For a bit in "I Belong to You", (track 8 on ''The Resistance'') Matt sings in French briefly. IT'S TERRIBLE. Did they just give him a sheet with some French words on it and say "sound it out"?
** At least it sounds better than [[{{LadyGaga}} Lady Gaga]] [[TakeThat did in French.]]

* Why, oh why, do people keep saying that Muse are a rip off of Radiohead? The two bands sound absolutely nothing alike!

** I can definitely hear the similarities. Muse often sounds a lot like some of the stuff on ''The Bends'' and ''OK Computer''. Of course, any resemblance has been blasted away since ''Kid A''.
** You could say that the Jeff Buckley influence that both bands share is evident when you compare, say, ''The Bends'' to Muse's ''Showbiz''. Sharing a producer probably helps as well. Bellamy even admitted to similarities between the two, and has stated that while bored of Radiohead comparisons, he takes them as a compliment. Pretty much everyone agrees that Muse were well past that point when the second album came out anyway.

*** And, on Muse's end, they sound more like Queen than like Radiohead now.
**** "United States of Eurasia/Collateral Damage" is a big offender, especially later in to the song. It's the voice + guitar riff at about 1:15 in.

** Muse have always sounded like {{Nirvana}} to some extent, yet nobody seems to have picked up on that.

** Matt's vocal chords are quite a bit smaller than an average man's; hence, he is able to reach higher notes than the average man. There may have been some studio trickery, but I've seen him do it live ... so it may just be that he's awesome.
*** It goes beyond that: Bellamy actually told an interviewer that a doctor once examined him, and proclaimed that he has the vocal cords of a woman.

* I don't get for the life of me why people they're the best live band and why they make it to the top of the "best live bands" list. I've seen some proshot videos and truth be told they come off as mediocre at best live. Matt is almost constantly out of breath, as well as he constantly breaks into random improvised solos/riffs during songs which ruin it completely. Dom's drums are always tuned WAY TOO LOW!!! The only member who impresses live Os Chris. Certain songs sound great (Knights of Cydonia, Apocalypse Please) and some sound downright AWFUL (Hysteria always sucks live and so does New Born). They aren't BAD live, but I've seen bands that are '''far''' better live (Music/IronMaiden, {{Music/U2}} and Music/BillyTalent to name a few).
** [[TopGear You don't know, man! You weren't there!]] But seriously, videos and ''actually being in a concert'' are two extremely different things.
*** "You had to have been there" is always a shitty defense. I'm sure it would have been fun if I was there, but doesn't mean it's a quality show.

** It's actually a bit from an aria from an opera, and Matt Bellamy is known to use classical music in his music so it's entirely possible that he actually knows what it sounds like and he's just not that good at French.
*** I mean, I know that. But knowing that, you'd have thought that he'd have made more of an effort to pronounce everything a bit better.

** Because people always lump British bands together. If they're British, they must obviously be imitating U2, Radiohead, or the Beatles. It's pretty funny when they don't agree on who they're ripping off. I've seen Coldplay called a U2 rip-off, a Radiohead rip-off, and even an ''Oasis'' rip-off. The reason Muse is so often called a Radiohead imitation seems to be because Matt is sometimes hard to understand and sings in a higher register. This logic leads me to believe that Jeff Buckley must be a Radiohead rip-off as well. They're coming out of the woodwork!
*** S'funny, I could have sworn U2 were an ''irish'' band...
**** As [[WordOfGod Casey Casem]] eloquently put it (concerning the band U2), "These guys are from England and who gives a shit!".
*** Well, this troper started listening to Radiohead after Muse, and when I heard "My Iron Lung" I understood why people would make the comparison; it sounds not entirely unlike Muse's sound circa ''Origin of Symmetry'' or ''Absolution''. (And, from the alternate perspective, a few specific Muse songs sound a lot like Radiohead songs; the resemblance between "Soldier's Poem" and "No Surprises" is striking.) But it turned out that that song wasn't representative of ''The Bends'' in general, so I'm back to scratching my head.

** You could say that the Jeff Buckley influence that both bands share is evident when you compare, say, The Bends to Muse's Showbiz. Sharing a producer probably helps as well. Bellamy even admitted to smilarities between the two and has stated that while bored of Radiohead comparisons, he takes them as a compliment. Pretty much everyone agrees that Muse were well past that point when the second album came out anyway.

**** United States of Eurasia/Collateral Damage is a big offender, especially later in to the song. It's the voice + guitar riff at about 1:15 in.
** I picture Muse as a more-theatrical Radiohead. Seriously.

** Muse have always sounded like {{Nirvana}} to some extent, yet nobody seems to have picked up on that...
* How the hell did Matt manage to sing so high on Micro Cuts? Don't get me wrong, it sounds awesome, but HOLY FUCK. Did he get an elephant to stand on his testicles or something? I don't think the average woman would be able to sing that high.
** Matt's vocal chords are quite a bit smaller than an average males, hence he is able to reach higher notes than the average male. Their may have been some studio trickery but I've seen him do it live so it may just be that he's awesome.

* The Lyrics to the first single 'Uprising' from 'The Revolution' contains the lines "They will not control us, they will stop degrading us" and so on and so forth. Calm yourself, Muse. You're international superstars, you can lay off the angst paranoia.
** I've never heard the song or the album, but I assume from the titles and what I know of the band that it's a ConceptAlbum relating to a revolution, possibly in a sci-fi or fantasy universe. Also! Being international superstars means their label will attempt to exert control over them, and whatever message they try to send out to the world through their music may be tampered with by meddling executives, and this would probably frustrate them. Just sayin'.
*** Nope, apparently they have complete creative control over their output. Their recent album is packed to the rafters with that kind of cheese. One of the contributing factors to the fanbase split over the latest album is the fact that Bellamy almost seems to be taking his own ridiculous lyrics seriously. I mean, they make millions for Warner Music Group selling singles that contain the words "it's time the fatcats had heart attacks".
** The album is called "The Resistance" and its supposedly a concept album based on George Orwell's NineteenEightyFour. The Thought Police are mentioned in the track of the same name and, of course, the name of ''United States Of Eurasia'' speaks for itself. In that case ''Uprising'' is talking about the Party and Big Brother. I also heard that ''Uprising'' is also about striking back at the greedy bankers that have plunged the world into recession.
*** "It's time the fat cats had a heart attack" is just a ''[[SarcasmMode little]]'' reminiscent of most people's feelings about bankers at the moment.
** Speaking as someone that really likes the band, owns all their studio albums, and thinks ''The Resistance'' is still a worthwhile purchase: they aren't the slightest bit political and are just cynically appealing to the desires of the masses to fight the power and break free from the vague tyranny keeping them down. This is not to say that they're wrong for it, but they're certainly not going down the path of RageAgainstTheMachine, PublicEnemy, or some other band that really is serious about activism. They have pretty much flat-out stated in interviews that they just read ''1984'' and thought "wouldn't that make a great album?" That's it.
*** If you look at a lot of their pre-Resistance work, you'll see the same themes and imagery. Assassin, Exo-politics, and others are just as "revolutionary". Also, Matt is fairly political and has some strong beliefs in Georgism.
**** Knights of Cydonia, although the music video...doesn't display it as much.
** Also worth mentioning that taking Muse serious is a mistake. I always figured the vague 'political' themes were more about getting the blood pumping and giving their songs scope than they were about real, definable politics, given their attitude.
** Muse don't take ''themselves'' seriously. They are fully aware of how [=OTT=] they are and Matt Bellamy has stated, on more than one occasion, that he's nowhere near as paranoid as people think he is. He's just into conspiracy theories and likes to pour all that into the songs he's writing.
** Surprise! Sometimes people write songs that tell a narrative story that is in no way related to themselves. Not everyone is PinkFloyd.
** judging from interviews and lyrical content, it's probably safe to say that any Muse song that isn't about personal experience, emotions, or abstract concepts is just adopting a narrative for the sake of lyrics. They're not really a political band, they just want to create an experience for people. Bellamy has said himself that he prefers to let fans come up with their own interpretation of his lyrics.
* Assassin. What is up with that song?
** The guitar is horrifically flat, especially in the intro. Do they not know how to tune an instrument?
*** Because they just decided to play with a de-tuned, horrible sounding instrument, just said [[StylisticSuck "Fuck it,"]] and put it on the album. [[SarcasmMode Makes sense.]]
** This is mainly because they were trying to get it to sound like System Of A Down, who used odd tunings on their first album.
** The song is about how people should murder their leaders, despite the fact that if we tore down our governments society would devolve into anarchy (likely not permanently, but still) and nobody would be out buying [=CDs=] or concert tickets, removing the one source of income Muse has.
*** They're not telling people to kill anyone. They're not some ultra-radical political band. They're not even close to RageAgainstTheMachine in that respect.
** It hurts your hand to play it in GuitarHero, and yet you only get like 150,000-some points for it. I don't like DragonForce, but at least Fire and Flames makes you feel like you've accomplished something.
** The drum track sounds like it was ripped from a different song and placed underneath this one slightly off of the beat. Listen to how that "clack-ta-clack trum-da-ba-da-da-da-dum" basically yanks the whole song out of tempo and see if you agree.
*** From Musewiki:
--->Several major changes were made to the song compared to earlier live versions from 2005. Previously, it had a longer, more distorted intro, more varied percussion, most prominently contained a slow bridge between the first and second chorus, and was generally more progressive. The original drumming was used in "Map of the Problematique".
*** The version of the song on the album is an edit of the original version, which was released as as "Assassin- Grand Omega Bosses Edit" as a B Side to Knights Of Cydonia. There are some slight differences in the vocals.
*** The Grand Omega Bosses Edit is also CrowningMusicOfAwesome.
*** Wow, that pretty much addresses all my concerns about the sound engineering right there. Thanks for hunting that down for me.
* Why do music elitists list Muse as one of the best bands evar omg but then immediately turn around and discredit all mainstream music, as though the two are mutually exclusive?
** Snob appeal, most likely.
** Music elitists ''hate'' Muse. Who the hell are you talking about?
*** Who the hell are YOU talking about? Pretty much every publication under the sun has given Muse some kind of accolade at this point. Even NME, a publication that has somehow developed a reputation for being eliteist and self-conciously "hip" (YMMV on whether or not this is actually the case) were promoting Muse in the early days, lapping up everything they did from Origin to Black Holes and inteviewing/featuring them constantly. The only exception is The Resistance, which still managed to scrape a 6/10.
** The same happened to The Beatles and Queen. And look how they turned out.
*** The same also happened to bad bands as well, so you cannot say that elitist hate will equal great music.
**** [[ItsPopularSoItSucks We have a trope for this]].
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