Muse performing Sunburn as part of a 3-song acoustic set also comprising Cave and Muscle Museum in HMV in Bristol in 1999 before their debut album tour for Showbiz supporting Skunk Anansie kicked off.
This was part of many in-store signing sessions the band did for Showbiz (it blows my mind what a dedicated fanbase they had built up just from touring the south of England playing live, and the few EPs that were out at the time). They were an extremely hard-working band when it came to touring: they played a stupid amount of gigs that year. I remember an interview from the summer of 2000 where an interviewer mentioned that they had played over 45 festival dates that year, “that’s 30 gigs too many”, the interviewer opined (cannot remember which interview this was). An insane amount of touring, which really solidified support for the band before Origin of Symmetry came out and Muse inevitably exploded over the mainland and UK. (British media were still lukewarm but that’s a different story.)
The day they played this signing session in Bristol, they also crossed over into Wales to do a second session in an HMV in Cardiff. The same day. Absolute beasts and madmen of live playing, no wonder they became who they became: one of the finest live bands on earth. Unfortunately no one recorded the Cardiff set!
This performance just lives permanently in my brain (and in my iPod. Don’t ask me what I got out of it on a 4 cm screen but I remember trying to work out Matt’s playing on it. Unbelievable what we made do with back in the day!) hence the URL!
[ID: a screenshot of an Instagram(?) DM from a fake user or scammer also named Matt Bellamy with the profile picture of the statue of Matt’s head from the WOTP artwork. Matt messaged the user saying, “hi it’s me me Matt Bellamy I need 173$ to continue making my new album (coming out 2025)”. A second message reads, “oooooooohhhhhh you semasoulalai” (likely a loose transcription “oh you set my soul alight” lol)]
My favourite thing about it is all the details they got right:
-> 3-year gap between albums tradition: the next Muse album may indeed come out in 2025 #oooooooohhhhhhYouSemasoulalai2025
-> oooooooohhhhhh you semasoulalai
-> “hi it’s me Matt Bellamy” is almost “hi it’s Matt from Muse” (I’d have lost my mind if they said that)
-> “173$” <- practically a Muse ticket these days (plus tax plus ticket master)
-> “my new album” a sequel to cryosleep? Teasing a new album through a scam? What a Matt thing to do #WillTheHacker22
Some lore for anyone who was confused about where that semasoulalai meme comes from
Not surprised that Muse is #1, but I’m honestly shocked that Franz Ferdinand made it into top five! I was expecting U2 or The Strokes to be up there
And the fact that all of my top five songs are Muse songs is honestly embarrassing. However, IN MY DEFENSE, first four were ones I’d play on repeat bc I was trying to learn them on bass, guitar, piano, etc
