The Persistence

Excuse me for the awful play on words in the title, but I can't be the only person to think that the majority of Muse fans are stubborn and persistent. Persistent in the sense that they keep telling themselves that Matthew Bellamy is a genius and couldn't possibly do wrong, right? After my first exposure to 'Uprising' and a related three hour debate amongst friends, I unexpectedly 'fell out' with Muse.

So many of us have waited a long time for this new album, The Resistance, and soon the wait is over. So far, Muse have publicly released two songs, the first being United States of Eurasia and the second being that bloody Uprising song. First let me start with '...Eurasia'. To put it bluntly, it would be unfair to legitimately credit this as an original piece written and conceived by Matthew Bellamy. I know this has been said so many times, but rightfully so... United States of Eurasia is Queen meets Lawrence of Arabia. The song's 'outro' (titled +Collateral Damage), is simply an old Frédéric Chopin piece tampered with the sounds of frolicking children, jet planes and missiles. So far, not a brilliant start eh? Not to worry, this is shortly followed by the release of the album's opening track, Uprising.

I'm going to copy and paste a message I left on Muse's Last.fm page, as it best describes my feelings towards what we've heard of The Resistance so far:

I fell out with Muse last night after listening to 'Uprising' and following a debate I had with friends. The 'Resistance' material that has been provided to us so far has been dreadful. 'United States of Eurasia' and the far worse 'Uprising' do not provide anything that has not been done before. In fact, Uprising is evidently a mess of a number of conventions that include an overused electro beat, ridiculous Dr Who synths, musical references to Blondie, and the corny hooligan chants of 'C'mon!'. A good song should relate to its listeners with at least some sense of intimacy, and even though I have been a fan of both 'Origin...' and 'Absolution' in the past, Mr. Bellamy has never achieved such emotions. I would call it an unfortunate obsession for someone with such obvious musical talents to rehash old material and to please people with nothing but meaningless bombastic spectacles. I conclude that Matthew Bellamy is not a genius, but a spectacular musician.

Fans of Muse aren't used to seeing paragraph-length statements on their beloved page, and funny enough despite the popularity, nobody made an effort to question my controversial opinions.

I wish to dwell on the whole 'bombastic spectacle' theory - a term actually brought to a debate I'd had by a friend. Muse can play. Muse can play real good. What they can't do is produce art. There's nothing new, nothing pretty, nothing of an intimate level. I never actually understood this in the past, and since having introduced myself to the wonders of so many artists over the century, I can never return to Muse. They can keep their reputation for marvelous live perfomances, but I pray that justice will be served, and that people will regard Muse as unoriginal songwriters and novice lyricists. Besides, Radiohead are better ;-)