#the Muse politsphere

[sunburnacoustic]

Just rambling here so ignore this completely…

Especially within the last few years, quite a few people have been talking about Muse not being political enough, especially given their (and Matt’s) fondness for revolution and bold themes. It’s not a new complaint, I remember an interview where the interviewer mentioned it to Matt, saying people were criticising Muse for not being political enough… this was in 2000. But it has come from everywhere, like from fans, from people in the press, from people that urm, know Matt’s past. From Justin Hawkins lmao (frontman of the Darkness, remember them? They released a proper weird album last year so they aren’t gone… anyway, that’s besides the point. He’s become a sort of music industry journalist? He’s got a YouTube channel, and he reviewed Won’t Stand Down when it came out and said something along the lines of, if Muse were specific in their political messaging, no one could touch them. It’d be so powerful they’d blow everyone else out of the water. I think, no doubt they already do… it’s something to think about, I’m neither agreeing nor disagreeing with him. He’s right that if Matt properly let loose I don’t think anyone could touch him, and we got a taste of that on We Are Fucking Fucked. An uncensored Matt would burn so bright we couldn’t look. But also, the tempered and considered broadness of their music does make Muse Muse. I won’t say). People pushed Matt in interviews on his political leanings in the 2009 days, they did it post-Brexit (someone started shit about him being a leaver for a bit and then he had to clarify that he was pro-reform, not pro-Brexit), and now with the whole thing about Matt’s past, and Compliance, and Ghosts even and everything. And his answer has always remained the same, it hasn’t changed in years.

But I wonder, is it in some ways America-centric, the way people keep needing him to clarify further when he’s said what he’s said multiple times? He often says he’s roughly ‘left-of-centre’, and it’s occurring to me that it’s possible a lot of us read that as left of the American centre. When he, as a Brit, is far more likely to have been talking about being left-leaning from the POV of… most other places in the world.

The NME interview from last June comes to mind.

“We want a new type of revolution,” Matt argues […]. “I think everyone knows we want a revolution, but we definitely don’t want a bunch of authoritarian lunatics from the right. That’s the last thing we want.

“And also we don’t want a total communist situation on the hard left either. I think what we want is something completely new. I don’t think it exists out there at the moment, but I think there’s a new type of politics that could emerge. I would call it Meta-Centrism. It’s an oscillation between liberal, libertarian values for individuals – your social life, the ability to be whatever gender you are, all that kind of stuff – but then more socialist on things like land ownership, nature and energy distribution. It’s oscillation between the two poles.”

It’s not what you’d associate with the American center, god no. But that’s closer to the centre of the political spectrum in most other places, in fact, as far as economic centricity goes, that’s pushing left.

And I mean, language can be tricky sometimes. In the very next sentence, Matt also says, “I think there’s a way of doing that but there’s no language that enables people to think that way. You’re either hard left or you’re hard right… I’m not with any of these; I feel like there’s a third way. There’s no existing side that describes what I’m looking for yet…I’m fundamentally anti-authoritarian – that’s just my nature.” I don’t think the wrong language should preclude the right intentions, and also you can see he’s talking about polarisation and the eradication of nuance (which is like, hmmm, who could it possibly benefit if people can’t meet in the middle, agree to concede even a little, or see their opposers as basically human. Who, I wonder).

It also strikes me that the ‘left’ Matt is talking about is most certainly not the American left either. It’s proper, radical anarchy. It’s a complete overhaul of democratic systems, and certainly far from even a pipe dream in mainstream American politics.

So maybe it’s just a very American reading of political beliefs of people not from America? And in the wave of everything that’s been happening, all of the rest of us have also forgotten how to read global politics. Somehow, all of us but Matt apparently. Makes me want to zoom out a bit; idk, I’ve just thought about this before and wanted to write it down somewhere. This seemed the blog to do it.

Anyway, if you haven’t, I do recommend reading that NME interview, it allows Matt to elaborate a lot more than an Instagram caption or a Twitter post would, and elaborate he did.

#And now it’s back to AI lmao #I logged out yesterday and had such a productive day I think I will do it again #Matt Bellamy #the Muse politsphere #(?) #muse interviews #Muse band #Muse