As I type, I am listening to the new Muse album, The Resistance. I have always found that I have a quite varied taste in music and I like many artists, but Muse do hold a special place in my heart…they are the one band that I can say I truly love.
I discovered Muse when I was around 16-17 years old. My Grandad gave me a free CD that came on a box of Golden Grahams breakfast cereal. Most of the tracks didn’t do anything for me, except this one track called Uno, by a band I had never heard of before – Muse. I quite liked the song, so I kept that CD close to hand and played it quite a bit just for the one track.
One day when I was having a root around the bargain bin in my local Woolies, I came across a single called ‘Sunburn’, by the band I remembered from the Golden Grahams CD. It was only 99p, so I bought it not knowing what to expect, knowing I would have no regrets due to the measly sum of money I had parted with.
I loved it, and my love affair with Matt, Chris and Dom began.
MTV2 were the only music channel that I can remember who played their video’s, so I harassed my poor mother by having it on constantly, hoping to catch a Muse video. I started to buy Melody Maker and NME to keep an eye out for news and new releases from the band. Jo, my best friend at school, bought me ‘Showbiz’, their first album, for my birthday, although I sadly couldn’t persuade her to stop listening to her cheesy pop long enough to actually listen to them herself.
I used to listen to Showbiz at night with my personal CD player, mouthing the lyrics to myself, trying to remember to not wake my little sister Jane, who I shared my bedroom with. Muse helped me getting through the angsty ‘the world hates me and I want to die’ phase I went through during sixth form. I also credit them with introducing me to more ‘credible’ music – I started to listen to more guitar laden rock/alt/indie music, instead of boy bands and girly bubblegum pop…i.e. Muse replaced Boyzone, RHCP replaced Steps, and so on.
It’s very rare I buy CD’s now – the world of music has moved on so much in just a few years since my days of taking my personal CD player into school with speakers that plugged into the earphone jack socket – now we all have iPod’s with speaker docks, and music is stored in digital form, downloaded from the internet and transferred between devices.
But Muse albums are something I always want to have a ‘hard copy’ of. Digital downloads are fantastic, but sometimes you just want to have something you can hold, something more ‘real’ than a file saved to your HDD. Very materialistic of me, I know.
Anyway, here I am, listening to The Resistance. I am currently on track 4, which is United States of Eurasia. So far I am loving the album. As a die-hard fan, I would say that though! I’m not going to review the album, I’m not very good at that kind of thing!
I will say this though – in my opinion, Muse are a little bit like marmite, you either love them or hate them. I would strongly urge anyone to listen to them at least once, even if you end up falling into the ‘hate’ camp and never let them grace your ears again.