things i love about muse

You may well have found yourself thinking, sometime during the past four months or so, "I don't get it -- just what does gryffinkat see in Muse, anyway? What's so great about them?" Well, through the magic of YouTube, I have decided to share a few of the things I love about them.

The BBC does a show called "Live and Kicking," where they have popular musicians on to play live. But when they invited Muse onto the show a few years ago, to play their hit "New Born," they asked the band to lip sync their song, rather than playing it live. So Muse rebelled. Though it's hard to tell, Chris (the bassist) and Dom (the drummer) have switched places, and Matt (the genius ... that is, lead singer/guitarist) is just plain ridiculous throughout the whole performance. (And yet, still sexy as all get-out -- check out those shades, eh?)



And here's another thing I love about them. The BBC does another show called Re:Cover, where they invite bands to cover a song of their (that is, the band's) choice and perform it live (for real this time). So when Muse was on a while back, they performed -- of all things -- "Can't Take My Eyes Off You." Although the BBC folks bill this as originally by Andy Williams (his version reached #5 in the UK charts), most Americans know it from the Lettermen's version, when they did it as a medley with "Going Out of My Head" (which reached #7 in our charts). Anyway, few people could take such a classic, relatively mellow song and make it sound this amazing in a rock version.



(As a side note, I hear that The Killers have also recently covered this song -- I'd love to hear it, though I doubt they can reach this kind of nirvana with it.)

In a related item, I also love the reason Matt gives about why the band chose to cover this particular song. It's at the end of this video, so you'll have to sit few a minute or so of inane conversation.



Mostly, though, I love watching Muse play live. (Insert enormous sigh, resulting from my thinking about the fact that I haven't personally seen them perform live, yet. One day ... one day.) But then, that's the glory of YouTube. While I'm really not a fan of music videos, I do love watching the first half or so of Muse's video for "Time Is Running Out" (the half before the Nazi-esque women start removing their clothing for no apparent reason -- one of the things I hate about music videos.) Just look how engrossed they are in their music. It's fabulous -- and, to me, inspiring -- to watch!



(There's no quote this time. I just don't feel up to it tonight. Incidentally, I will be starting the scoreboard over soon, since Erin has effectively trounced everyone -- again. And the last quote was from Middlemarch, as Jane Heiress said.)