MUSE

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came as a request from Warner Records. Evidently Warner wanted Muse to release a greatest hits album. After the band discussed the situation among themselves, they agreed to do it, but not exactly in the way that Warner Records had intended. Instead of just culling their albums for the hits, the band set to work selecting different styles of songs from the previous albums and wrote new songs to go along with those styles. As they would like to explain it, it’s a greatest hits album of new songs. Evidently the plan worked because both label and fans are ecstatic on how the project turned out. The project was recorded at Matt Bellamy’s Red Room studio in Santa Monica, California. Additional recording took place at Abbey Road studios and Black Lodge Studios in London. Bellamy explains that the lyrics of Will Of The People were inspired by “the increasing uncertainty and instability in the world [...] as the Western empire and the natural world, which have cradled us for so long, are genuinely threatened”. He further explained that Will of the People “is a personal navigation through those fears”.

Prior to the release of the selfproduced Will Of The People, Muse started the buzz rolling with a slick release of five songs leading up to the release, along with a few videos to gain their fans attention. The first hint of the new album came in December of 2021 when Matt Bellamy released a small snippet of a video of he and his 10-year old son listening to the first single from the album, “Won’t Stand

Down.” In January of 2022, the band finally announced the release of “Won’t Stand Down” as the first single from the album. The second single from the album came two months later in March when the band released “Compliance.” It was with the second single release that the band finally revealed that they would be releasing a new album in August of 2022. The band was very precise with the release of their new singles prior to the album’s release. Nothing was hurried.

The third single from the album, the album’s title song, “Will Of The People” came out in June, three months later. Along with that, Muse hit the road for a European festival tour where they test drove their new singles for their fans along with a new, previously unreleased song, “Kill Or Be Killed.” The song proved to be a favorite of fans along the tour, so halfway through July, the band released “Kill Or Be Killed” as their fourth single from the new album.

The following month on August 1st, Music released a statement announcing that when Will Of The People would be released, it would also be available at a NFT (Non-Fungible Token) on the “ecofriendly” Polygon-powered platform Serenade. This made Will Of The People one of the first new chart-eligible formats in seven years As was reported in The Guardian, “The Muse NFT album will retail for £20 and will be limited to 1,000 copies globally. As both an NFT and a limited-edition format, it is relatively sparse in its offering. Buyers will get a downloadable version of the album –complete with different sleeve – as high-res FLAC files; the members of Muse will digitally sign it, and each of the 1,000 buyers will have their names permanently listed on the linked roster of purchasers.” This was certainly a bold and trend-setting move by Muse.

“Muse are breaking new ground with their latest offering. NFTs have gradually evolved from a fringe topic in an emerging market to one of the cornerstones of a multi-trillion-dollar industry,” says Emelie Olsson, Chief Operations Officer of Corite.

On August 23rd, 2022, Muse announced that the fifth single from the album would be “You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween” would be released on August 26th, the same day as the album’s release.

Will of the People debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 51,500 units in its first week making it Muse’s seventh UK number-one album. In the United States, it debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200 chart. It debuted at number 1 on the Top Alternative Albums and Top Rock Albums charts with sales of 24,000 albums. By January of this year, Will of the People went on to sell over 300,000 units worldwide.

Muse is guitarist/vocalist Matthew Bellamy, bassist Chris Wolstenholme, and drummer Dominic Howard. It’s hard to categorize the music of Muse as they constantly are evolving and changing their musical stylings from one album to the next. Perhaps that is one of the most endearing qualities of the band. With some bands, it is easy to speculate what they will be releasing from year to year. With Muse, it is never a set style. One album might be alternative rock, the next more orchestrated. The following album could be layered with strings followed by an album leaning more towards electronic and pop... and then they’re back with a harder edged sound for their next album. They can be totally unpredictable... and through all their changes, their fan base just continues to grow and grow.

This trio started playing together at the age of thirteen in their hometown of Teignmouth, Devon. The names of the band seemed to be constantly changing during this time as the band searched for the name that they though really fit them. They started out as Gothic Plague, moved on to Fixed Penalty, and then to Rocket Baby Dolls. By the time they reached 1997 they had finally settled on Muse and continued on next page