Muse — Music Videos

British rock on a grand scale

Muse are the English trio of singer, guitarist and pianist Matthew Bellamy, bassist Christopher Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard. Their music brings together alternative rock, progressive arrangements, electronic textures and unusually theatrical singing. Bellamy’s falsetto and guitar figures provide an immediate signature, while the bass and drums give even their most elaborate songs a strong physical pulse. The contrast between intimate anxiety and enormous musical gestures runs through their catalogue.

Songs and studio evolution

Plug In Baby captures the urgent guitar sound of Origin of Symmetry, originally released in 2001. Uprising, from the 2009 album The Resistance, places a marching rhythm and synthesizer colours around a direct communal hook. Between those recordings, Muse developed a style that could move from piano-led passages to distorted riffs and carefully arranged vocal harmonies. Their albums reward listeners who enjoy shifts in scale within a single song.

What to listen for

Listen for the interaction between Wolstenholme’s melodic bass lines and Howard’s precise drumming beneath Bellamy’s voice. The songs often make their emotional point through musical tension: a restrained verse opens into a broad chorus, or a repeating figure becomes increasingly insistent. Muse offer a useful route from turn-of-the-century alternative rock toward the more electronic and expansive sounds of the following decade.