No More Compliance!
Tyranny and resistance on #FreedomMusicFriday
I am back from New Orleans. The French Quarter is such a hoot! I have some unpacking to do, but let’s squeeze in a quick #FreedomMusicFriday anyway.
As I said last week, my default assumption is that, as a general rule, musicians will lean towards the conventional political left. Perhaps that is the case with the members of the band Muse. But I will say this: they’re no friends of tyranny.
I suppose it is possible that, like many others, they only feel tyrannized when their team isn’t in power. The timing of the line “and a clown takes the throne” (“Dig Down,” 2017) is at least suspicious. But with Muse, I really do have to wonder. They seem really opposed to tyranny. Resistance to oppression is a recurring theme in their music—more than any other band that I have heard. Even more than Rush. Perhaps they are consistent in their opposition, no matter what clown is on the throne.
In any event, if opposition to oppression is where our Venn diagrams overlap, then so be it. That is good enough for me…for music-listening purposes, if nothing else.
I am going to post two Muse songs below: “Compliance” and “Won’t Stand Down.” The lyrics of each (Compliance, Won’t Stand Down) largely speak for themselves. The videos, while somewhat abstract, are highly suggestive of the themes. Watch, follow along with the lyrics, and you’ll see what I mean. Whatever else they may be, they are definitely allies in their loathing of tyranny, control, and manipulation.
Do you get the messages? Do you like the messages? Do you like the music?
Ummm....quick Wiki search and follow link tells me this about Muse, lead singer Matt Bellamy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Bellamy
"Bellamy is vaccinated against COVID-19 and supported masking during the COVID-19 pandemic.[47]"
[47] https://www.nme.com/big-reads/muse-cover-interview-2022-will-of-the-people-3243209
"‘Compliance’ is the sort of future-pop freedom fighting that Muse have been doing for decades, but by featuring lines like “fall into line, you will do as you’re told”, “no more defiance, just give us your compliance” and “fear is controlling you”, it sometimes sounds alarmingly like something Ian Brown or one of his fellow anti-vaxx disinformation rockers might come up with today, featuring Laurence Fox, Toby Young and Piers Corbyn as the Fart In Your Trousers Choir. “It’s an unfortunate coincidence,” says a fully-vaxxed, mask-friendly Bellamy. “I could have written that song in 2008 or 2005.”
...
"In fact, as a figure who famously went down many a conspiracist rabbit hole in the early days of the internet – the “first wave” of online truthers, as he puts it – but emerged 10 years later with a far more balanced view of the world and its media, Matt has found it unsettling watching conspiracist ideas become so widespread during the pandemic.
“People [in the ’80s and ’90s] felt like the mainstream media was just a big business that was in cahoots with the establishment,” he recalls, “so when the internet started to emerge the thirst for people saying what maybe the truth is was really strong… By the time we got to the early 2010s, I came full circle. The lack of accountability [online] became obvious to me. It made me realise, ‘OK, this is just some people who can say whatever the fuck they want. This is bullshit’. It’s not freedom of speech; it’s freedom to manipulate. It’s freedom to lie anonymously. The ridiculous irony is, all these people think they’re so anti- this, anti- that, but all you’re doing is making [Mark] Zuckerberg rich.”"
...
"Piano ballad-turned-Queen rocker ‘Liberation’, though, is rather thornier. Language such as “you make us feel silenced / You stole the airwaves but the air belongs to us / And violence – you’ll make us turn to violence… We have plans to take you down / We intend to erase your place in history” could easily fit into a song called ‘Stop The Steal’ catering to disgruntled Trump supporters. Matt’s a little horrified at the suggestion.
“It’s the complete opposite of that,” he insists. “If anything that was more leaning towards what I felt seeing the Black Lives Matter protests. I’m not gonna try to claim to have any understanding of what that culture’s been through or anything, but “intend to erase your place in history” was that feeling of anger… that emotion that you feel in the moment of revolution, where you just want to tear it down and destroy this, even to the extent of changing history itself – people pulling statues down. And “you stole the airwaves but the air belongs to us” – if anything that was a reference to what we were living through, waking up to a mental tweet every day… that hijack of public discourse by one person.”
Elsewhere the album delves into the more human side of the pandemic experience, with the elegiac piano glower ‘Ghosts (How Can I Move On)’ empathising with those who lost loved ones and the spooktronic ‘You Make Me Feel Like It’s Halloween’ with victims of lockdown domestic violence.""
FF - I'm going to have a hard time hearing the song knowing that the musicians wrote the lyrics meaning something much different than I/we think.
For some obscure reason, I have an urge to sing this line to the tune of ABBA's "Happy New Year":
— No more compliance, and the fireworks are through...