Muse was born with a bad rap.
In all fairness, the British power trio’s 1999 debut, Showbiz, bore more than a few stylistic similarities to the shambolic, arena-ready moments of guitar-era Radiohead. But despite reasonable charges of copycatdom, the album was a strong collection of anxious rock songs, drawing influence not just from The Bends, but from black metal, baroque classical music and straight pop.
Nowadays—situated next to the fallout of post-Y2K ‘head-rippers—the band’s early Yorkian similarities seem pretty innocent. Matthew Bellamy’s is an insistent bawl, one that borrows from TY’s cock-eyed, edge-of-cliff force, but gets by on its own character. The guitars on Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry squall and shout like a
meat heady Greenwood, but do way too much rocking to pass for anything on the smarty pants OK Computer. In retrospect, the rip-off hullabaloo is kind of silly. Especially when there’re records by Keane and Coldplay (plus a host of other shit) to charge with swindling.
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