My good friend Joe Marino, who I’m currently working on a mixtape for, has repeatedly asked me to make this a song of the day. He even confessed to crying while listening to it. Because I love him so, here you go buddy. Happy now? You’d better like this post! The coolest part about “Follow Me” (to me) is that the main beat was created from recordings of Matt’s son while in the womb. Obviously, the song is written for his son. Enjoy.
Category Archives: Rock Sinfonico
Song of the Day 09/25/12: Muse – Supremacy
My favorite song, after “Survival”, on the new Muse album is this track. I love Muse being over the top and not taking music too seriously. It’s also the first song by Muse I’ve heard in a long time that reminds me of Origin of Symmetry which gets me really excited. It sounds like, if Origin of Symmetry era Muse was asked to write the next James Bond Theme. Enjoy.
91. Muse – The Resistance
It’s very hard to explain The Resistance without discussing all of Muse’s albums in chronological order. I definitely recommend you listen to the Muse albums in the order they were produced, ignoring their placement on my list. Listen to them from the post grunge, brit rock stylings of Showbiz all the way to The Resistance’s symphonic psychadelic dance rock. The Resistance is the end of Muse’s evolution and even though it is my least favorite Muse album, they all appear on this list so that in no way makes it a bad album. The Resistance is dance-y in sound a lot of the time and that isn’t a bad thing. This album is full of bombast and flare, as it fully embraces the electronic operatic feeling it has slowly moved toward in the last few albums. It is an album that feels very tongue in cheek. Like Muse is saying, “We’re mega famous now? Let’s make an album that’s so ridiculously over the top that people will think we’re assholes.” Instead, once we got the joke, it made us fall in love with you all over again. I’ll try to make this apparent in my track by track examples. Once you understand this aspect of The Resistance, that it is a self parody of their previous work, it goes from being an album that leaps too far, to an album that hits the perfect spot for this point in their career. Don’t believe me about its comedic elements? Here’s a quote from Brian May, guitarist for Queen when asked about the album: “I think they’re very good boys and extremely talented, and like us they have their tongue in cheek a lot of the time.” Bam.
How does it make me feel?
Like I’m out in a dance club and I meet a girl. And over the course of the night we get closer and closer before I finally realize… WOAH! She’s a dude! But instead of getting upset, we just laugh about what an awesome night we had and share another drink.
(This is a description I originally held for the album’s first track, and then realized it kind of applied to the whole album.)
What to Listen for Track by Track
♦ The awesome danciness of Uprising that can almost be taken seriously, until they hint to you that they’re joking, using the clever use of “COME ON!” and the over the top solo at the end.
♦ The ridiculously epic “opening to a Soap Opera” music that opens Resistance. The super cool base line at 4:16.
♦ The most dancy awesome strings ever on Undisclosed Desires.
♦ The most epic-ly, over the top build of United States if Eurasia that culminates in the completely over the top “Eurasia” chant, before ending in an awesome piano breakdown.
♦ The drums that keep the beat in Guiding Light.
♦ The part that sounds like System Of A Down that starts at 1:24 of Unnatural Selection.
♦ The crazy weird breakdown at the center of MK Ultra.
♦ I Belong to You stretches Muse’s desire to be overly pretentious by first singing in French and then adding a clarinet solo.
♦ Exogenesis’ being completely, utterly, over the top, with strings and pianos that build towards nowhere and then fall apart just to confuse us. But which ultimately make us fall in love and not care that it makes us feel super pretentious. Oh, and did I mention Exogenesis being completely beautiful?
Example Track
Song of the Day 08/15/12: Muse – Undisclosed Desires
I was looking for a way to share my excitement about the new Muse album that’s on its way, and I was shocked to find that I’d never featured “Undisclosed Desires” as a song of the day. Definitely my favorite track off of Muse’s last album, The Resistance. I love it because of how subtle and addicting it is. That little string part in the background!! I could listen to that little part forever! I happen to have a really hard time remembering the order of the lyrics to the four lines in the chorus, and I always crack up when I try to sing along because they’re pretty much interchangeable. I’ll end up using the first half of one line and the second half of a different line, and for some reason this is very funny to me. In the end, it just comes down to that strings part.
It’s funny because at this point I feel like Muse has officially become two different bands. There is rocking out crazy old muse in the style of Showbiz and Origins of Symmetry, and there’s odd dance-y disco Muse of the last two albums. I love both bands.
Song of the Day 07/07/12: Muse – Survival
This song has me absolutely cracking up! I remember when I first heard Muse’s “United States of Eurasia.” The bombastic and epic scale that almost seemed too much. I kept asking, “Are they serious?” It was just too hard to take seriously. Then I found out that it was in fact very tongue in cheek (a fact I mention in my review of The Resistance). That allowed me to just go with the flow and sing along at the top of my lungs. I never thought they’d create a more ridiculous song then “United States of Eurasia”, but Muse has proved me wrong with “Survival.” It’s Muse’s answer to Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Survival was specifically written for the 2012 olympics.
I can picture Matt’s troll face as he played this for the Olympics committee for the first time. And the lyrics. Laughably ridiculous rhymes about winning the race and keeping the pace. The thing is, I’ve been listening to it all day, so that’s how it ended up here. The guitar part is my favorite. So is Matt’s completely over the top “I’m gonna win!” at the end to make sure everyone’s aware of just how much he’s messing with us.
Song of the Day 12/10/10: Muse – Feeling Good
The Greatest cover of all time. Post your own best cover.
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