DATE | WEEKS |
May 8, 2004 | 3 |
Sometimes a song is just undeniable. If you hear it enough times, it just wears you down, like the ocean eroding a boulder. I think that's one of the things I miss about listening to terrestrial radio. There's a lot of valid criticisms of radio stations, but I still believe, however naive this may sound, that sometimes they played the fuck out of a song because it was that damn good.
That's the best way I can explain my love for "Time Is Running Out". It took 16 weeks to ascend to number one on my top 40, and I can remember resisting it at first when I heard it. Listening to it today, it feels like a song that I should have fallen for instantly. The rest of Muse's catalogue has gone on to justify this, but even if it didn't, "Time Is Running Out" feels like an all-time classic.
Matthew Bellamy was born in 1978 in Cambridge, England. His father, George, was a member of the band The Tornados, who were one of the first British artists to get a #1 hit on the Hot 100 with their song "Telstar", in 1962. His mother, Marilyn, was from Belfast, and met George almost immediately after moving to England in the 1970s. The Bellamys moved to the coastal town of Teignmouth in Devonshire, but the couple divorced soon afterward. Bellamy lived with his mother and brother and took up music at an early age.
Bellamy met drummer Dominic Howard while they were in school, and tried out for Howard's band Carnage Mayhem. The two recruited Chris Wolstenholme to become the band's bassist, even though he didn't know how to play the instrument. The band changed their name to Gothic Plague, and then to Rocket Baby Dolls. When Rocket Baby Dolls won a battle of the bands in 1994, the band members were shocked. They all quit their jobs to take the band seriously and settled on Muse as the name of the band, supposedly because it was easy to fit on posters.
Muse began playing shows in London and Manchester and met Dennis Smith, who owned Sawmills Studio in Cornwall. Smith signed the band to his label Dangerous Records, and they recorded two EPs under the label in the late 90s.
Muse had enough attention at this time that they were invited to perform on the Emerging Artists stage at Woodstock '99. By September of 1999, Muse released their debut album Showbiz. The album reached #29 on the UK album chart, and the five singles from the album each peaked progressively higher on the UK singles chart. Their next album, Origin of Symmetry, did even better, reaching #3 on the UK album chart, and becoming their first to reach Billboard's album chart, peaking at #161.
Even though they were making waves in their home country, their lack of success in the United States led to their American label, Maverick Records, dropping the band in 2002. Soon they were with with Warner Bros. Records, and they began production of their next album Absolution in the fall of 2002.
Absolution was released in September 2003 and was an immediate smash in the UK, debuting at #1 on the album chart. "Time Is Running Out" was the second single from the album. It was one of the last songs recorded for the album. Wolstenholme said an interview that "we wanted to go to something more funky [...] a little more groovy. It was something we'd never really done before".
I love the intro on "Time Is Running Out". It's suspenseful and creepy, but it lures you in. It sets the stage for Bellamy's vocals: "I think I'm drowning, asphyxiated. I wanna break the spell that you've created."
Bellamy's narrator sounds like he's describing a toxic relationship he changing to get out of. "You're something beautiful, a contradiction. I wanna play the game. I want the friction." Whoever this person is will be the death of Bellamy, but he won't let them bury it, won't let them smother it, won't let them murder it.
The release in the chorus is the best part of the song for me. For my money, Matt Bellamy is the most underrated vocalist in music. His high notes are a glaring contrast to the heaviness of the instruments, but they work beautifully. And the "oo-oo-ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah"s are addicting.
Wolstenholme specifically cited Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" as an influence on the song. That comparison never occurred to me until I researched this post, but I can kind of hear it when I listen to the two songs. Muse never made the zeitgeist-shifting moment that "Billie Jean" was, but I appreciate an artist swinging for the fences to try and make the leap to the big time. (Michael Jackson's only appearance on my top 40 was 2001's "You Rock My World", and it peaked at #21.)
When you think about rock music, "funky" might not be the first adjective that comes to mind. Particularly in the 2000s, the emphasis seemed to be on aggression and emotion, not on making people want to get up and dance. That's gotten murkier as the lines between genres have been blurred over the years. Plus, rock musicians listen to pop radio just as much as the rest of us do. Most of them appreciate good songs no matter what station they show up on.
I believe someone like Trent Reznor could've absolutely made his living as a pop songwriter if he wanted to. That the songs he actually made weren't touched by pop radio probably speaks more about the format and its audience than his music. But then I also feel that the margins produce exponentially more interesting ideas than the center. That's just where Reznor found himself, and he had no intention on moving from there. (Nine Inch Nails will soon appear in this column.)
While a song like "Time Is Running Out" was heavy enough to earn its place on alternative radio, it absolutely wouldn't have been out of pocket to play this at a club, either. It's the type of song where you wonder where each note is going to take you. And when it's over, the 3:56 runtime will feel tantalizingly short.
The video for the song sort of plays on that notion. John Hillcoat, who previously directed videos for Elvis Costello, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Depeche Mode, directed the clip for "Time Is Running Out". Muse perform on a large table surrounded by military types, both male and female. Eventually the generals and admirals all get up and start dancing. The inspiration for the video seems to be Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satire Dr. Strangelove, but I think it reminds me just as much as the classic dinner scene from Tim Burton's magnificent 1988 film Beetlejuice.
"Time Is Running Out" was the biggest hit for Muse to that point in the United Kingdom, peaking at #8 there. In the United States, it was their first big hit. Even though it didn't chart on the Billboard Hot 100, it still reached #9 on the Modern Rock chart, their first entry there.
Muse followed up the song with another delirious, jet-fueled banger. "Hysteria" may not have connected with me quite as much at that time, but I could tell it followed the same path as "Time Is Running Out". It topped out at #7 on my top 40 at the beginning of 2005. On the Modern Rock chart, it too peaked at #9.
Have had their biggest success to date, Muse felt freed from restrictions and more relaxed in making their next album. 2006's Black Holes and Revelations was yet another #1 album for Muse in the UK, and became the band's first top 10 album in the US. The three singles from the album released in the United States all reached the top 10 on the Modern Rock chart, with lead single "Knights of Cydonia" peaking at #10, and "Starlight" getting as high as #2. (On my chart, they peaked at #9 and #25, respectively.)
My favorite of the single off the record was the third one, "Supermassive Black Hole", a psychedelic freakout that plays to all of Muse's strengths. On my chart, it peaked at #3 in October 2007. It also wound up as their biggest UK hit ever, getting to #4 there.
As the decade wore on, Muse had defined a sound that was as close to unique as you could find on alternative radio. They may never have enjoyed the success in the United States as they did in their home country, but I don't think that was their fault. To me, they're one of the few bands that got better with age, pushing their sound as far as it could go, rather than coasting on their biggest hits.
Nobody was gonna push Muse underground, at least for me. We will see Muse back in this column.
EXTRAS
Here's a scene from a 2008 episode of Gossip Girl that features "Time Is Running Out" played by a string quartet.
(As a featured artist, Leighton Meester's biggest hit on my chart, Cobra Starship's 2009 song "Good Girls Go Bad", peaked at #4.)
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