Muse On Their New Album, Live Show And Conspiracy Theories
Muse singer Matt Bellamy has spoken to The Guardian ahead of the release of their new album, Will Of The People, out 26 August.
Talking about the new Muse album, Bellamy said that it came about when their record label suggested they release a greatest hits album. Unwilling to do that, Muse delivered a new album that touches on moments from throughout their career, “It seems a bit like the end when you do a greatest hits,” Bellamy says. “And I just don’t know if we’ve got enough hits. We’re not really a pop group.”
Bellamy went on to discuss Muse’s upcoming stage show, “Our live show is so much fun, I can’t even tell you. Massive lights, huge crowds, everybody singing along. It’s a little bit moreish. It’s akin to being in a football team and scoring the winning goal every day.”
It’s a far cry from the earliest days of the band, before Bellamy embraced an extroverted rock star persona, “I was way more shoe-gazey and standoffish. No physical movements, no eye contact.”
Discussing lyrical topics, Bellamy spoke about conspiracy theories and why he thinks they have such currency, “First of all, it’s distraction from the really pressing issues. It makes people feel engaged with topics that really are going nowhere. In terms of human psychology, there’s a comfort that maybe human beings somewhere, even if they’re evil, are in control, when in fact the truth is far more frightening – there are no humans in control and it’s all a bunch of chaos.”
Muse, Bellamy says, started out as “an emotional expression of unknown anxieties: I don’t really know why I’m feeling this way. I’m saying things and doing things and some of it’s confusing, some of it’s weird, some of it’s stupid. But I’m trying as time goes on to understand what those underlying emotions are about and what I can do about it.”