Muse and musos
There was a bit of a debate recently in the Comments section of the blog about whether Muse were/are ‘pretentious’. I followed it with interest. I’m always pleased when there’s talk about a band who were around when I was a student; makes me feel I’m not as old as I sometimes appear to be. (I don’t particularly like Green Day, but I’m delighted that 14-year-olds still seem to love them, because that means a part of the universe is the same as it was in 1994). Muse, I’ve never had a strong opinion on. I liked their first album, in about 2000-ish, and saw them live around then and they were good. Then I sort of lost track.
I’ve sort of had the impression recently that their music has become… well, a bit overblown, certainly, a bit melodramatic. But then, fans (like Chris, in a Comment) counter that it’s ‘tongue in cheek’. But then, how are you meant to get into it? And so on.
The question, I think, is whether music alone CAN be ‘pretentious’ – as opposed to the rock-star gesturing of bands, which frequently is pretty stupid, and puts people like my wife Emily off modern pop music altogether (almost. I’ve got a bit of Ben Folds, eels and Belle and Sebastian past her).
It’s interesting for me because Radiohead, who I’ve always loved, are often accused of pretentiousness, or over-seriousness, or being too gloomy – all of which I vehemently disagree with. The gloomy part, I disagree with most of all, as I do when it’s applied to anyone (Nick Drake, Nirvana, whoever) because what’s more uplifting than hearing something brilliant? But the seriousness thing is tricky. There’s no doubt that Radiohead’s musical ambitions are lofty and that I’m seduced by that. The same goes for Arcade Fire. Equally, the Super Furry Animals have said in interviews that pop music is the most frivolous thing they can imagine doing, and the Flaming Lips (like SFA) have been known to dress up as spacemen or have giant animal costumes on stage. And other favourite bands of mine like REM are poker-faced and silly in equal measure.
Even in the stuff I myself do, the debate is a complicated one. I’d say stand-up is among the most disposable and frothy of artforms, but there are people who take it very seriously indeed who I think are amazing. On the flipside I think the novel is the greatest artform there is, but many, many novels are as pretentious as all hell and I hate them for it. But then, The Magus by John Fowles is a bit pretentious and it’s also wonderful.
Tricky.
Especially tricky as I’m not really making a point.
I suppose the point is that it’s equally valid to take what you do immensely seriously, or not seriously at all: in the end the quality of the work itself is what matters. But overall, whatever you think of Muse or Mumford and Sons or Radiohead or anyone, on the whole I don’t think people should be scared of pretention in pop music. To make something really good, to dare to even try, is pushing your luck right from the start. Someone has to back themselves to do that. You don’t create much of merit by being massively ironic; well, you can, but in the end, earnestness can take you further. I think that’s what I think. If you see what I mean. Anyway, what do I know? I’m in bloody Portugal!
Posted by Kathryn on July 23, 2010
I do quite like Muse.
I often think my taste in music is pretentious. Maybe it’s just having been educated about Mozart and Bach and Beethoven that means I end up with pretentious classical stuff on my iPod. (Equally I have previous eurovision entries on there, including the Swedish entry from 2007.) So I like all the classical-music influences on Muse’s most recent albums from a really pretentious “oh that reminds me of Chopin’s nocturne…” sort of way.
The Twilight-song thing is interesting.
Again, I only really like the Rachmaninov bit.
Someone kill me before I die of pretension.
Maybe Muse are a little pretentious, but their music is usually rather well written and doesn’t fit the usual boring 4-chord progression. And from my very nerdy point of view that makes it interesting to listen to.
My level of pretension extends to reading paradise lost on a plane. Maybe I’m getting too self-analytical this late at night.
There may be many comments from me appearing on old blogs as I try to catch up with things I’ve missed. Sorry Mark.
Posted by Someone on July 14, 2010
Hmm, I wouldn’t say Muse were pretentious… I’d say they’re weird. They’re really weird, but I don’t reckon they’ve changed a lot since they’ve got big… I think it’s just the weird thing.
I feel like I should love Muse because I know they’re awesome; I could watch them live all day, or at least through the aid of a tellybox as I did for Glasto and T in the park recently – they’re just sort of mesmerising. Even though he doesn’t say a lot (because I think he’s a sort of shy?) he keeps the crowd’s attention with such ease, and he is an awesome musician. He’s just one of those people with music through his veins. BUT I don’t really like to listen to their recorded albums much. Maybe up loud and in a car for a bit, but I soon get bored without seeing Matt master everything. Not a massive fan of their last 2 albums either – the beginning ones were the best, as is often the case.
Also I agree with Amycool about the other people’s opinions kind of clouding your own thing, so these days if I love a band I’ve sort of given up trying to show them to friends because they never seem to understand. I guess it helps with the circumstances that you first heard them maybe – you can’t recreate that for someone else, and THEN it just clicks and you couldn’t possibly envisage someone NOT seeing/hearing the brilliance that you do. But then I do become more critical too and I can see that some of my music is probably whiney or slow, but if they just listened to it as a whole..!
Oh and about the ‘gloomy’ music being uplifting is so true – I’ve realised recently quite a bit of my favourite music could probably be perceived as gloomy or depressing, but it makes me feel so happy. ‘Tis weird. (But I guess that’s the answer to what could make me happy: loud music. Or it’s a start :])
Posted by ChrisP on July 14, 2010
Very good argument from Madeline. To be fair, all the interview clips I’ve heard from Muse have portrayed them to be a lot more down to earth than that, some of the best (and very, very UNpretensious) quotes I’ve ever heard have been from them, I don’t think they aim to be as up themselves as their songs indicate them to be, although the lyric he specified is toe curling poor. Spot on with the ‘Muse making a recipe of a Muse song’ idea though. That is a real issue.
Also, had very little idea about the back story of NSC which Phil mentioned, didn’t realise it was mean to be ironic, I don’t know if this makes it better or worse or more or less pretentious. I heard that it was written specifically for Twiglet, but I didn’t know that it had the classical piano at the end, although I would bet that it doesn’t have the same magic as something like the middle bit in Butterflies and Hurricanes. Playing Rachmaninov in a pop song though?! Radio 1 would never play that bit and it’s hardly a song for the fans.
As a band they are still great technically though, I have to hand that to them, no faults to be found musically.
Posted by Anji on July 14, 2010
I sort of just want to go ‘meh’ to all this. I can’t say I’m a fan of Muse, and I can’t give a good argument why I’m not or why people should be. I like what I like, others like what they like. The world keeps spinning that way.
Posted by Lydia on July 14, 2010
I love Muse. But then I live in Torbay, so it’s pretty much obligatory.
I think that in some ways, the pretentiousness of music can be measured by the pretentiousness of it’s fans.
Posted by amycool on July 14, 2010
I try not to listen to other people’s opinions of music as it sometimes distracts me. I think every single thing Elliott Smith recorded is wonderful and triggers strong feelings in my stomach, but when I used to encourage friends to listen to him most were unimpressed. The result was that I sometimes tried to listen to the music from someone else’s perspective and I noticed lyrics that I thought could sound a bit rubbish to someone else, and it just wasn’t fun.
Similarly, I love Keane. I know that it’s not cool to love Keane but I just do. I tried to fight it, but the music makes me happy and I couldn’t care less what the band members are like or what music magazines think of them.
So whether or not a band is pretentious or the lead singer is a bit of a prick or teengage girls like them, I tend nowadays to just listen to a song and see whether it makes me feel anything or not.
I’m not sure whether what I just wrote is at all relevant.
Posted by Beth on July 14, 2010
The Drums said in an interview recently, that whilst they were hanging out with Muse in New York (as you do) they claimed that the music they were making was the more original music to be heard in a decade. It’s comments like that, that make me dislike them as a band a bit; how can any music be 100% original when everyone is influenced by someone else? And, it’s a bit of a bold statement to, essentially, be saying that they are one of the most original bands of the last decade… When they aren’t. The Drums came back by saying that they considered themselves one of the most unoriginal bands. Meaning that all they wanted to do was make nice pop songs and that if people liked them, then that was good but if they didn’t then they were really bothered.
Muse are pretentious and I think probably really overthink their music. Radiohead think a lot of about their music, but because they want it to be perfect, not because they’re aiming it at one market or group of people if that makes sense… I think Radiohead think a lot about it because they want to produce great records not because they want to necessarily sell shit loads of albums….
I’m rambling. Half of that or more probably doesn’t make sense. Sorry!
Posted by Madeleine on July 14, 2010
P.S – I love the Dirty Projectors and Panda Bear. So my pretention radar may be a bit off.
Posted by Madeleine on July 14, 2010
I just wrote a massive thesis-comment on this, accidentally closed the window and lost it all. So sorry if this has a tinge of rage.
Although I was one of Muse’s detractors in the previous debate, I also quite liked their early stuff (If you heard an album in around 2000 it was probably Showbiz, which is quite god). My problem with Muse is that I think they’ve become more and more an exaggerated version of themselves.
With the recent albums, it’s like someone has gone “what are all the steriotypical things you think of when you think “muse”? Right, we’re making an album of those” so it’s all terribly overwrought orchestration, heavy handed political statements, random space references, bad Thom Yorke singing impressions.
Also, what makes them pretentious to me is the way that they talk about their own music (Matt predominantly). Q magazing did this thing where they asked readers to vote on a lyric to have on their “artists of the century” front cover. A muse lyric won, but when Q magazing asked Matt about it, he said “oh no, I don’t think that’s the best lyric, I would have chosen “it’s time the fat cats had a heart attack”, thats probably the best lyric on the album”. I just thought “wow, you’re going to correct your own fan on what his opinions on your lyrics are?”. I think they’ve got so caught up in being “MUSE” that they’re not making musical “organically” (Pitchfork word) any more and they just take themselves way, way to seriously.
I also love Radiohead (and love to talk about them at length. Sorry) and why I think they’re not pretentious in the slightest is that you get the feeling from them that they would be making the same music if they were doing it on pro tools at their flats and preforming to 20 people. They were always concious that they should make music that was important to them and not be influenced by what people thought they should be (anyone who’s seen “Meeting People Is Easy” can attest to the problem that they had with that) They take what we percive as risks, but because thats were they feel the logical next step is, not just for the sake of taking risks. When my mum first saw a video of Thom Yorke preforming, she said “wow, it looks like it’s being beemed down to him from space” and that’s how he’s described some of his songwriting too. Although everyone always talks about how important they are and how much of a genius Thom Yorke is, he is always the first to disagree, when you look at all the earnest discussion of “karma police” and then him coming out and saying “not really, it was just an in-joke we had”. Muse always seems too ready to belive everyone who says they’re the second coming of christ. Although Radiohead shares some grand political or social themes, it’s all told from such a personal level, it never comes off as preachy. Plus, their actual music is just so beautiful and brilliant. I agree with what you said Mark about their music certainly not being “gloomy” because even if you’re crying listening to one of their songs, you’re still thinking “God, this is amazing”.
I think earnest, even pretentious music can be good, but as long as it’s coming from the right place, for the right reasons. And I think frivolity in music is also important, because sometimes people need to be reminded that we’re not curing cancer here.
Aaaaaanyway. This was way too long. Any probably could have just been left at Clembear’s Pattie Smith quote. But I make it a rule to never say in 7 words what could be said in 700.
Posted by Mark Watson on July 14, 2010
Heather is right, this is Corry uploading prewritten blogs for Mark while he is away enjoying beautiful sun and beautiful family.
Posted by Heather Jones on July 14, 2010
(Note to MusicalLottie: Mark pre-wrote some blogs – including this one – before he went on holiday and they are now being uploaded (by Cory?) on his behalf in the UK on the dates pre-arranged.)
I have to hold my hands up on this one: I love U2 and can take massive doses of Bono’s sincerity (both in the music, the lyrics and in his campaigning) without baulking.
So, each to their own, I say. Pretention, seriousness, sincerity, integrity. Going for it, wholeheartedly – that’s not to be sneezed at, surely?
Mocked, perhaps, but not sneezed at.
Posted by David on July 13, 2010
Okay..
It’s fine to be clever because you’re clever.
It’s not fine to try to be clever because you think you should be clever.
Posted by Phill on July 13, 2010
Interesting. I’m a fan of Muse, and I think their last two albums have been amazing (their previous three were pretty good, I have all of them, but I think the last two are a step forward musically). Saw them live last November, loved it.
Oh, and don’t hate me for this, but I do actually like ‘Neutron Star Collision’. You’ve got to play it with the Rachmaninov at the end though, not cut it off like they usually do on the radio. And I also think it works better when you know that it’s a sarcastic song (apparently it was written after Matt Bellamy had just broken up with his girlfriend). It wasn’t written for Twilight, it was just a song they used for it.
Aaaanyway, about being pretentious: I think pretentiousness really doesn’t matter as long as the actual thing itself is good. I think Muse are awesome, therefore I don’t care if other people perceive them as ‘pretentious’.
If that makes sense
DISCLAIMER: none of my musical opinions can be taken seriously, as I like pretty much anything. As long as it’s good
Posted by Clembear on July 13, 2010
Patti Smith had a good line, “Take your work seriously, but not yourself” – I think this is very smart. And I think Muse take themselves too seriously.
Posted by Carl on July 13, 2010
Never purchased any Muse albums but always kind of appreciated what they do.
Saw them at Glastonbury a few weeks ago.
Unbelievable.
Posted by Alice on July 13, 2010
It’s funny that this should come up today, as yesterday I was talking (at length) with a muso friend about Glastonbury this year, and his experiences there, mainly musical.
The music taste debate comes up all the time within my circle of friends and family, my mother is a classically trained violinist who unashamedly
loves dances in the kitchen to Billy Joel an Lionel Richie. One of my heroes at
drama school, a teacher who had studied ballet, trained at the Lequoc school and performed Beckett in Dublin confessed to a love of The Carpenters.
The guilty pleasures in our collections give away a wonderful truism about music: it’s the emotional buttons it presses that
make us passionate fans. We can learn about music of all genres but cannot really control what we respond to. For that reason alone there will be grandstanding and pretensioisness in music till civilisation end, and once we are sort
of comfortable with that we can enjoy the silliness within the grim self awareness. For instance, if I hadn’t stepped back and seen how funny Bono is I’d probably want to kill him, which is probably worse for my health than his, as wealthy people tend to hire private security.
Personally I’m grateful for overt pretensioisness; without it I would not always see the line in the social sand. And without it there would be no Evelyn Waugh, robbing the world of some of the greatest food writing in the English language.
I got quite in to that. Gosh I hope you (mark) aren’t readng this, it wouldn’t bode well for a holiday.
Posted by LisaD on July 13, 2010
I don’t think music itself can be pretentious, I think we as fans can be. The music is recorded and released, the pretentious factor comes from outside sources.
I agree that finding out a young un likes the songs/bands of my youth makes me feel less like I’m heading fast for middle age/rock irrelevancy. The Boston punk band that ruled my youth played one of their songs at the USA Independence Day festivities in town last week, backed by a 90 piece classical orchestra. It made me feel really old, until I looked around and spotted 12 year olds pogoing to the song. The beat goes on…
Posted by MusicalLottie on July 13, 2010
MARK why are you blogging on your holiday?!? Tsk. The first one I understand, but a full blog while you should be spending time with Emily and Kit is far beyond the call of duty. If the Emergency Blogging is turning out to be unsuccessful this time and you really can’t bear to let a day go without a blog, just a line will do, surely? You work so hard that you really ought to just have your holiday to yourself and your family!!!
Posted by ChrisP on July 13, 2010
And as I said, it was their own front man who said that some people will dislike it because it’s pretentious, some people will love it because it’s a bit different. He’s singing from a different song sheet most of the time but on this level I think he’s spot on.
Posted by ChrisP on July 13, 2010
I did try and make a big point of referring to myself as an ‘ex big fan’. I’m not overly impressed with the last two albums (compared to the previous three). And then the songs were used in Twilight AND THEN… they wrote a song for twilight which was utter crud. Believe me, Mark, I am in no way attempting to defend ‘Neutron Star Collision!
The knife is yet to be pulled from my bleeding back. And the back’s of all other Muse fans who were following from the days when good albums were being released with lyrics about interesting and provocative topics, with well constructed music, and there were no tie-ins with major film releases and their tracks were not being sold off for use for adverts for Sky.
I’m a much bigger fan of the crisper cleaner sound of the early albums (am also a Radiohead/Pink Floyd fan, won’t bore you to death with details of preferred produces bla bla bla but that was also an issue) and think it’s a shame that the edge and darkness of tracks like Megalomania or, Space Dementia or Muscle Museum is now lost, because they won’t go triple platinum or whatever. These songs were based on some very heavy going material, both science and novel based but really fascinating stuff.
The music has always been pretentious, no doubt about it, look at the song material, but then it was good pretentious music, now it’s just a pop song with a few references to George Orwell and the Osborne Children’s Book of Space. Absolution was 5050, it was the turning point. Luckily, I recently discovered The Flaming Lips.
I could go on but I’ll stop here.
Heard them about 2000 ish, saw a concert and liked it but then lost track? Good decision.
Posted by Custard_Cream_Dreams on July 13, 2010
Maybe it’s a moot point? For me feeling something as pretentious is not something you get from analysing, but is a gut reaction. You instantly go “oh… you wankers…” or something similar. Indeed, the question might be rephrased “do you hear Muse and think “oh… you wankers…”? Personally, I don’t find it with Muse, but I’ve only heard the singles from their latest.
I understand you might have that reaction to this post… but we’re all friends here!
Posted by Laurs on July 13, 2010
I’m not their biggest fan, I’ll be the first to admit, though I wouldn’t have called them pretentious either. To me, they are just a bit blah…
I do know people however, that think I am close to the spawn of satan for thinking this.
Posted by Steph on July 13, 2010
I love Muse. I have, since around the start. The thing that slightly annoys me is people only liking it because it’s associated with the whole Twilight thing.
I am yet to see them live. Hope I get to one day…
Posted by Rachael on July 13, 2010
Muse have definately changed over the years but then again most bands do and that isn’t always a bad thing I suppose. I read “other bands of mine” in stead of “other favourite bands of mine” by mistake but I quite like your claiming ownership of them. My mum does that, she thinks that people that I like on telly are ‘my friends’ and noone else likes them.
Posted by Dawn on July 13, 2010
I absolutely ADORE Muse!
Whatever mood I am in, there is always an appropriate track to wallow in.
I don’t know how I would get through a whole hour at dinnertime in Sainsbury’s canteen without Muse to keep me company. I can just switch off from all my surroundings and lose myself in the music.
In the 80′s I was a big fan of Queen and both Bands are theatrical in their approach to music.
Matt Bellamy is a superb musician and can play almost any instrument, and his voice is spellbinding. When he sings “unintended” my body just melts and turns to jelly because his voice and the lyrics are so beautiful.
The one thing I hate is the preconception that all Muse fans are goth college kids! I am 51 and my parents aged 71 and 73 also love the band and have all the albums.
Posted by Misha on July 13, 2010
Surely balance is the best thing? If you could only have one or the other then life would be intensely dull. It would be like having to choose between only ever having BBC4, Opera and Dickens for ever, or Channel 5, Kylie and Heat magazine for ever. The wonderful thing is that there’s both, and so much inbetween.
Or something.
Posted by Ivan on July 13, 2010
First comment?
Talk about chilli sauce. It always polarises opinions.