The Tuesday DiScussion: Are Muse the most important band of our generation?

they're top notch - arrangements, the fact that they're in an "indie" band from before our current era of post punk wankery who actually put bass to good effect, Bellemy's ace guitar playing etc etc.

but i don't think they have the frontman with the vocal / lyrical ability to pull off such a lofty title.

is incredible.
i have it on special promo youcan'tleakthis headphones just now. it's a complete adventure through space-scapes and dancefloors and moshpits throughout the decades.
s eanfact: without seeing MUSE go from band pushing me their demo on instant messenger to seeing them play Exeter Cavern numerous times to seeing them take on the world, there would be no DiS...

as i feel that Radiohead's best work has been released between 2000-now.

i can respect the fact that they are very good musicians and the songs are sometimes interesting but there just seems to be no emotional depth to them. Dont know if its the lyrics or the delivery but the songs seem to be contrived and overly theatrical without benefit.
Definitely not that important either, no where near the impact and scope of radiohead.

What makes a band more important than another one?

Muse aren't orignal, and I doubt they'll be that influential.

I think they're crap too.

this is what i was trying to say above. there's no emotional depth to what they do.

They are a very good band, but not the most important

I've heard now three times. It makes me cringe at how boring it is.

Melodrama with no gravitas becomes histronic.

agreed.

Don't get me started on this band. I can listen to them for ten to twenty minutes and feel ok with it and myself. Any longer and violence begins to swell inside me and my stereo's existence suddenly becomes threatened. I have seen them loads when I was young and stupid....and even then I couldn't stand them after the first five songs.
My mum loves muse and she is nearly 60....but she put it better than anyone ever has..."they can at times be orgasmic, yet somehow the thrill is reflective of a plastic fantastic toy induced climax, whereas with Radiohead, you can only describe it as the real thing". Mum's....ya gotta love 'em!

Aside from interesting style and dramatic flourish, there's no substance there at all.

That sounds like Stokholm Syndrome that was made by a mainstream British band working nowadays.

that play stadiums - and that I'd rather see in a stadium. So I guess they're achieving some of that hugeness they're going for. Admittedly, I haven't listened to them in ages, but I'm looking forward to them at Reading.

I might buy the new CD, because I've liked each successive album more - so this should be my new favourite.

thats funny.^^^

... I recently found out that they ain't all that bad. Loads of fun, in fact.

But my one gripe is with Bellamy's truly terrible lyrics. This is what prevents them from ever attaining the level of importance and significance they crave.

Sound and fury, signifying nothing ...

see also: the non-story about moz/the smiths

muse are just a band, really not that amazing or special... really!

I hate to sound like a muso (no pun), but half the time they're ripping of Bach, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, playing it on guitars and putting a bit of disortion on it.
I do like Muse, don't get me wrong, but I echo the feelings of what's already been mentioned - the fact that it's generally soulless music. And I can't see how on earth they could be the most important band of the generation.
Mind you, they put on a hell of live show.

i agree with your mum cept i had muse as quick dirty sex orgasm and radiohead as long love making with multiple orgasms.

theatrical rock thing they do, it's really good the way they make every song so big and full of life.

However I can't listen to a whole album of Muse, it just gets boring and repetitive after a while.

Radiohead > Muse - In terms of substance and consistency

Muse > Radiohead - The singles, and great 3 minute rock songs.

Pretty much sums up the discussion.

Next week on DiS: Are Busted more influential than The Beatles?

Muse WILL influence many people from our generation.

A lot of the negative vibes coming from people in this thread could be cleared up if they only went to watch them live!!!

are you mad? Muse are mainstream. Some of the ubercool folk around these parts of town wouldn't be seen dead at a venue with more than twelve peopole in attendance.

Of course they've created one GREAT album. You can't say that "Origin of Symmetry" is not a great album. It's incredible.
And besides, I started a band because of them, and they got me into Radiohead, so I've got a lot to thank them for.
However, Radiohead are better.

You can degenerate this site into more territories that are even more juvenile than the ones it's currently residing in.

Seriously though, this Muse thing is a non-issue. Everyknow with a brain knows they're fantastic musicians, there's no doubt about it, everyone knows that they can pen a tune, but they can't pen any sort of progression, or create tunes which truly envelop you in every single way. LOTS OF NOISE AND EPIC SOUNDS does not make an overall epic band. It just helps on the way.

ladyoftheflowers should be consulted on all drowned in sound content. it's the only way worthy articles will ever go online!

I vote for this movement

I seriously can't see the point of view of everyone who says Muse are soulless - I've tried. People criticise the theatricals and the classical influences, then say they're not original...how is that? In my opinion they are quite simply one of the most interesting, original and at the same time intensely listenable bands around, and their live shows are nothing short of mindblowing. Yes, so Muse really is the Matt Bellamy Show, but what the hell. He is amazingly talented and is just desperate to get all his ideas into reality which I guess is where all the chaos comes from.
Anyway, back to the original question - most important? I'd like to think so (they're not, by a long way, my favourite band, but nonetheless I think they've worked for the title and deserve it) and I don't know who else I could put forward, but in the end I still don't think they've reached the masses enough yet to be the sound of this generation.

Origin was very good song writing wise but absolution was the biggest pile of made-for-radio rock music for a good few years, they are money hungry whores now and the vision they once had has dissipated because they realised they could make a bomb playing shit music

they put token 'weird effects' and silly piano bits to get musos involved its all so transparent

bellamy has admittedly, got the whole 'guitar god' look going on whilst on stage which is kinda cool!

Muse are a really important band. My very first gig was with Muse supporting Ash at the Astoria at an NME gig and they fucking blew Ash off stage (obviously!) From then I've seen them about 5 times I think and I can't wait for the new album. I find myself going through stages of intense Muse listening then periods where I don't listen to them for months. I've enjoyed everything they've ever put out although I don't have a favourite album, just enjoy their output as a whole.

It's weird to think how their prog often quite heavy sound has become this popular. I mean I saw them at the above Astoria date when I was 16 and just started college and when I was finishing Uni at 21 they were playing two sold out nights at Earls Court and headlining Glastonbury? It's fucking madness!

Thank you, kind sir, for saving me some typing.

i can't connect with their music, to me it's sort of hollow and yes, soulless. and i can't stand his voice, and the way he always loudly inhales every time he sings a new line. i don't get the whole quasy-apocaliptic grand sound.
saying that, i've seen them live because i've got a muse-obsessed friend and they put on an amazing show. but not my thing at all. i think you can either love or hate muse, there's no in-between. and i certainly don't love them.

Yes, Muse are ONE of the most important bands of our generation, but I think it's impossible to single out one single act. We have a diverse range of artists in the world at the moment that will all be influential in years to come, but for different reasons. Here's a snapshot: The White Stripes, Radiohead, Squarepusher, Elbow, The Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand and Dizzee Rascal will all be revered in the future, in my opinion. They are already extremely well-known and have really made people sit up and think about new music. Only time will tell...

no discussion of Muse's brilliance can be complete without him.

i like Muse a lot, but over a length of an album they can get a bit...wearing.

indie band. Certainly not important, definitely not 'most important of our generation'. They're not massively adored by the indie underground crowd, nor the NME reader crowd, so if they can barely polarise opinion in either of those camps then isn't this question a bit laughable?

overblown, pompous guitar and vocal histronics.

I really don't understand their appeal.

agreed, what a strange article?! I honestly don't think they've made that big an impact on the UK scene

i ever saw live, they were flipping marvelous. moshtastic.

Muse just don't have the guts they're just another bland rock act flogging a tired formula into the afterlife.

For all of the people that seem to be criticising Muse's style, saying its merely a Radiohead rip off; you should really either listen to one of their albums all the way through or see them live. Matt Bellamy is probably the most talented musician in rock right now. Muses last two albums have both been diverse, moving and breathtaking musically; serving as a complete contrast - showing real potential for Muse to dabble in any genre they want really. Supermassive Black Hole underlines that again. So, we have a frontman that is one of the best guitarists in rock today as well as being amazing on piano, a band that always kick ass live, and each album offers a completely different musical experience - how can anyone criticise this or deny it?

I just cannot for the life of me understand the people who "cant see the appeal" in Muse, when they're so extreme live and have so many revolutionary ideas. Oh, and for the idiot above somewhere who said the arrangement to every song of theirs is the same, Blackout is done in 3/3 so you're clearly wrong. As for the "question"; i think the answer will be yes after Muse's new album drops.

Oh, and another thing that seriously pisses me off is all of these indie snobs who dont like Muse because more than a handful of people have heard of them. The people who like all of these obscure artists simply because they can then claim to be more profound in their musical taste need to fucking get a life. There's a reason Muse's last 2 albums have both stayed at number 1 - They're a brilliant band, in a music scene where most artists stoop to any level to sell records, or are too afraid to try anything new or out of the ordinary (SMBH).

Seriously, we can't answer this article for about 20-30 years. Yes, you can say that Radiohead have been important because a lot of bands sound quite a lot like them, but important can have 2 manifestations.

1 - completely totally utterly groundbreaking in terms of sonics (as music can't really change unless you think Metal Machine Music is actually music...): so, we're talking the Can's, the Kraftwerk's, the Coltrane's

2 - music that hones a certain sound to a peak of perfection, that express something brilliantly within an already expected milieu: The Beatles (really, they were a chamber pop/merseybeat/rock and roll band with incredible lyrics and occasionally exciting chord changes), Dylan, Zeppelin, Hendrix, Miles Davis, Metallica (yes, Metallica - come on, if you can make that kind of noise and still sell millions of records, you've hit the nail on the head in terms of expressing the most important parts of that genre).

It's not always about complexity, or about weirdness, or about being groundbreaking (The Band were incredible, some of the best songs I've ever heard, but not exactly stretching into unheard of musical territory. Ditto Robert Johnson, Artie Shaw etc). Fugazi are a case in point. Invented hardcore and started off emo, simply by playing punk hard, fast, with real emotion and passion.

What ties all these people together? People saw them, heard them, bought them, and emulated them, took parts of what they did into their hearts and minds and then reproduced them intelligently and in a variety of different ways: the manner in which the greatest artists approached music is what inspires people. Classical music copies, reinterprets, minor changes a theme and it's seen as incredible progression - could the same thing be said about Showbiz? Bellamy's "Themes on The Bends/OK Computer"?

I write this while listening to Kid A - a very very good album, sonically challenging, with passion, and possibly of soul, but not wholly accessible. Then again, listening to James Brown Live at the Apollo, I hear some raw emotion, some sheer talent, but don't leave intellectually fired. Important bands in a generation should leave you with a feeling of connection bewteen your head and your guts; you should be fired intellectually, emotionally, viscerally.

Muse don't do that. Radiohead do it on OK Computer, and some tracks from Kid A onwards (Morning Bell, Idioteque and National Anthem, Myxomatosis and 2+2=5), and I haven't heard a band since OK Computer to actually do that.

For sheer emotional content, Coldplay have a very good shout for being one of the best bands around, and for sheer mindblowing musicality, Radiohead do it.

Oh, I just had a thought. Queens Of The Stone Age have what most bands don't seem to require anymore, but which suffused a lot of music in the 40's - 70's: humour. After prog and punk, humour only really stayed on in boogie metal, and AC/DC really aren't what I'd call great.

Do Queens Of The Stone Age have "it"? Are they the band of our generation?

Important.

T ome, for a band to be important, they have to have had a strong influence on other bands/artists. To be the most important of their generation, they have to have a huge and lasting influence on the music scene.

Are Muse and Radiohead that important? I don't know. I lost touch with that generation a long time ago.

The most important/influential bands of the last 10-15 years aren't Muse and Radiohead, they're Take That and the Spice Girls. And, in an entirely different way, Hear'Say.

but having not heard the album it's impossible to judge. The example that springs to mind having read the bazillion radiohead threads that periodically appear on the music board is Pablo Honey - it appears to be held in much less esteem than the rest of their stuff but they followed it with The Bends and OK Computer - so it's not impossible that Muse could do something similar.

Having said that, i've always found Muse a bit of a singles band. The last album seemed to have a lot of formulaic fodder, and formula's not bad in small doses when executed well for pop purposes (eg Time Is Running Out) but across an album it's tedious.

I also think it's necessary to be a bit more specific on the 'of our generation' front. Much as i rate Radiohead, i don't see them as a band of the current generation - Kid A marked for me a point where they parted from the general public to do great but less commercial things, just as Oasis and Blur exited as the generation's band - to be crap or a little more obscure respectively - before them. So really i don't see Muse going up against anyone specifically, there are a few obvious front runners based on current form but no one stands to be knocked off a perch at the moment, it's an open competition.

At least when it comes to the number of bands that are influenced by certain band.

And the "biggest" band nawadays are RHCP.

What is more, the most exploring band seems to be called The Mars Volta.

But I guess that about 2020 it will be agreeable that the band of our generation was TCTC

Guess they got all them 'best live rock act' awards through slyly paying the bigwigs eh, Sickboy?

Cheers, I needed a good larf.

Maybe you should consider it so this site stops being shit.

listened to a bit of Showbiz, Origins, and parts of Absolution and seen them live about 4 years ago. Personally, I'm not a fan of their music, but I can see why people love them. I can see why they are often praised for their live shows as well. But they are just not my thing really. Important? I'm not really one to judge or give an opinion on that, as I don't know much about the band, but I still felt compelled to add a reply.

Muse are a good band..but most important, not a chance. They haven't moved on the face of music or turned out some amazing opus of a work yet..they've done some good stuff, infact they got attention for matt bellamy's voice being similar to a buckley/yorke palette..and in essence he has got a great voice but on top of being a confident songwriter and impressive guitar player... However, in context of what modern music is about and how it is progressing, for me muse play a valid part but are in no way the most important band around..i reserve strong titles such as 'most' for other players on the scene_personally speaking!

i'd say no. not even close. I started out as an absolutely massive fan, started their first online mailing list (when everyoen used them instead of forums), met them a few times, etc. I got bored quite fast, and nothing they've released has really made me interested again. Maybe it was overkill that made me sick of them but i really can't hear how what they're doing is that revolutionary, in fact much of it is very predictable, and as live bands go they put on a good spectacle but are again quite predictable and slightly soulless. There's also far too much hyperbole on this thread from insulted muse fans...Matt is the best guitarist in the last 10 years? Really?

i used to think radiohead were excellent and that muse were somewhat deficient copyists. however, thom yorke decided that his head should really be close to his bowels and shoved it as far up his musical arse as he could manage.

now i have listened to muses output i am a convert. the idea that they have no soul is a bit of a daft one. Radioheads soul is made up of anal methane, explosive, deadly but not good to breath in. Muse are a bit more magical and have progressed without having to destroy their sound. their soul is still that of freedom and happiness.

apparently you can go up to matt bellamy and chat to him still, thom yorke on the other hand is unnaproachable. where's the soul if you forget that you're only a human being?

when people say that Bellamy and Yorke sound the same. They are both high-pitched, that is all. Matt's voice possesses a more longing wail and has a thicker edge.
You might as well have called Bruce Dickinson and Thom Yorke similar.

I think Muse are important in the sense that they remain essentially creative and each album has a different sound; all that, whilst remaining accessible enough.

On to of that, anyone who says Matt Bellamy plays a shit show needs to get a brain transplant.
Tell me, is there anyone out there who is capable of
- playing piano parts as complex as those of Rachmaninoff
- singing/wailing/screeching
- hurling out riffs and melodies with the precision that Matt Bellamy does? All within three songs?
I really don't think so.

As for soul-less... all you people need to stop listening to Supermassive Black Hole and tune into some other Muse songs... Shrinking Universe, anyone? That song has the most evoking wail I've ever heard.

...if I say totally Yes!!! couse what they do is magnificent. You people should try to stop listening to a lot of music and try to start hearing the music that really worths.
I wonder if that person who said first that MUSE is soulless has understood what she\he has said, I'd better believe that they are too emotional and certain individuals don't manage to get into it and don't even try to do it or their live performances just blow my mind and all my senses and their lyrics can turn upside down all my understanding of all this crazy world.
MUSE make music not for everyone but for those who can appreciate it, for everyone else there is pop.
I can't understand how can it be that in this era of artificial music…..people don’t pay attention to really talented musicians like Matt Bellamy (and here is where I accept no criticism, couse the way he is playing the piano as well as the guitar and also his voice are unique).
I would recommend to listen to their music more than three times...maybe you will get into it...if not....just find you something easier to digest, but don't insult those who make
real MUSIC.