Muse

History

From Teignmouth to the World

Muse formed in Teignmouth, a small coastal town in Devon, England, in 1994. The three founding members were Matt Bellamy on guitar, piano, and vocals; Chris Wolstenholme on bass; and Dom Howard on drums, who came together through a chain of lineup changes in Howard’s existing band. Bellamy auditioned as guitarist, and Wolstenholme, who had previously played drums, switched to bass to fill the gap. After cycling through a series of names, they briefly performed as Rocket Baby Dolls for a single local battle of the bands contest, which they won, before the trio settled on Muse, a name that stuck partly because it was short and looked good on a gig poster.

Shortly after winning that contest, they quit their jobs and committed to the band full-time. Through the late 1990s, Muse built a local following, released early EPs through Dangerous Records, and eventually attracted transatlantic attention. A trip to New York’s CMJ Festival in late 1998 brought them to the notice of American label Maverick Records, leading to a deal that enabled the US release of their debut.

Bellamy’s musical DNA was unusually wide for a rock guitarist. His father, George Bellamy, had been the rhythm guitarist in The Tornados, the British instrumental group whose recording of “Telstar” scored a transatlantic hit. Bellamy himself had played piano from childhood, entirely self-taught, eventually developing a dual-instrument approach: classical-influenced piano lines running alongside feedback-driven guitar that became central to Muse’s sound.

Breaking Out: Showbiz and Origin of Symmetry

Showbiz arrived in 1999, produced by John Leckie, Paul Reeve, and Muse. The album introduced Bellamy’s high falsetto vocal style and drew on the tension between melodic rock songwriting and raw, post-grunge aggression. The debut showed promise without yet delivering on its full potential, and the early Radiohead comparisons, partly a result of sharing both a producer and a falsetto-driven vocal style, followed Muse for several years before the band’s own identity outgrew the label.

Origin of Symmetry (2001) made those comparisons obsolete. The album was a genuine sonic leap: denser, more confrontational, and explicitly drawing on the classical influence of Rachmaninov alongside the rock aggression of Rage Against the Machine. Jeff Buckley’s influence on Bellamy’s vocal approach was unmistakable, a debt Bellamy made no effort to hide.

Maverick Records demanded alterations to make the record more radio-friendly for the US market, specifically the removal of the falsetto vocals. Muse refused, and the band and label parted ways, leaving Origin of Symmetry without an American release until 2005.

The Breakthrough: Absolution

Absolution, released in 2003, was co-produced by Muse and Rich Costey. The album incorporated orchestral string arrangements that gave it a cinematic scale the band’s previous work had only gestured toward. The album debuted at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart, their first chart-topper, and generated the band’s first UK Top 10 single with “Time Is Running Out.”

The record sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide and shifted the band’s trajectory in the US, where the fanbase that had been building through Origin of Symmetry imports was finally given something new to hold onto. The eventual American release of Origin of Symmetry in 2005 completed the picture. By then, Muse had become one of the most significant British rock acts of their generation, and Absolution was the album that proved it.

Stadium Rock: Black Holes and Revelations and Wembley

The political anxiety and arena-scale ambition that ran through Absolution intensified on Black Holes and Revelations (2006), again co-produced by Muse and Rich Costey, whom Bellamy had approached about the follow-up during the Absolution tour. Those themes found their vessel in songs built for the largest stages imaginable: conspiracy, surveillance, global conflict, the smallness of the individual against vast systems of power. The album’s “Supermassive Black Hole” became Muse’s biggest-selling UK single.

The touring cycle that followed this album culminated in sold-out shows at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium in 2007. The shows were recorded and released as the live album and DVD HAARP (2008). Wembley Stadium later recognized the 2007 H.A.A.R.P. Tour shows as Wembley’s greatest event in a 2011 public poll covering Wembley events from 1923 to 2010.

That same period saw Muse cement their live reputation through Glastonbury. The band headlined the Pyramid Stage in 2004, and the performance, despite the devastating personal circumstances surrounding Dom Howard, whose father passed away near the Pyramid Stage shortly after the set, became one of the festival’s defining headlining slots. They returned to headline Glastonbury in 2010 and again in 2016, becoming the first act in the festival’s history to have headlined each of its three Pyramid Stage nights.

Symphonic Ambitions: The Resistance and The 2nd Law

Self-production suited Muse. For The Resistance (2009), they dispensed with an outside producer entirely and turned out what was, at the time, their most classically ambitious album. The record earned the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album in 2011, the band’s first Grammy win. Its closing suite, “Exogenesis: Symphony,” was a three-part symphonic work that folded the full band into a large-scale orchestral arrangement, a statement that Muse’s interests extended well beyond the boundaries of genre.

The 2nd Law (2012) pushed the boundaries further in a different direction, incorporating dubstep-influenced bass drops and electronic production alongside the orchestral elements. The response was divided, with critics and fans uncertain how to read the shift. The album’s most quietly significant aspect was the contribution of Chris Wolstenholme, who wrote and sang “Save Me” and “Liquid State,” his first songwriting and lead vocal credits on a Muse record. Both songs addressed his recovery from severe alcoholism, a battle serious enough that his bandmates had at times been unable to work with him. It was a rare moment of personal vulnerability in a catalogue otherwise defined by grand abstraction.

Drones, the US Number One, and a Second Grammy

Drones (2015) was a deliberate return to focus, a concept record built around the dehumanizing logic of modern warfare and drone technology, recorded and co-produced by the band and veteran producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange. It became their first US Billboard 200 No. 1. The Grammy for Best Rock Album followed at the 2016 Grammy Awards, a distinction only a handful of acts share.

For the Drones tour, Muse staged the show in the round on a rotating central platform, among the most technically elaborate productions the band had staged up to that point, and a live spectacle designed to reflect the surveillance and control themes running through the music itself.

Later Work: Simulation Theory to The Wow! Signal

Simulation Theory (2018) marked a sharp turn for the band. Drawing on 1980s science fiction, synth-pop, and retro pop culture rather than orchestral rock or progressive ambition, it arrived with multiple external producers and a deliberately fragmented sound. Critical reception was mixed, with some reviewers finding the stylistic shift unconvincing while others praised its playful reinvention.

Will of the People (2022) landed as a partial course correction. Blending hard rock, orchestral passages, and electronic production without committing fully to any single direction, it debuted at No. 1, the band’s seventh UK chart-topper. The album was also notable as the UK’s first No. 1 record to incorporate NFT technology as a release format.

The Wow! Signal, released on June 26, 2026 through Warner Records and Helium-3, was Muse’s tenth studio album, inspired by the unexplained 1977 Wow! radio signal that gave the album its name, exploring themes of cosmic mystery and contact with something beyond human understanding. It debuted at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart, the band’s eighth chart-topper, putting Muse level with Oasis, The Killers, and Led Zeppelin among the artists with the most U.K. number-one albums.

Legacy

What Muse built from Teignmouth outward is a body of work that defies easy categorization. Alternative rock fits best, though progressive rock, art rock, and space rock all capture real aspects of the band’s ambition at different points in their catalogue. The tension between the intimate and the monumental, between a falsetto voice reaching for something emotional and a wall of sound designed for stadiums, runs through their best work and gives it its staying power.

Their influence has reached the generation that grew up watching them. The Warning, a Mexican rock trio whose early online covers included Muse’s “Resistance,” went on to open for the band on the Will of the People World Tour in 2023, a sign of how far the reach of Muse’s music extended.

Muse formed in Teignmouth in 1994 and went on to sell out Wembley Stadium four times, headline Glastonbury three times, win the Grammy for Best Rock Album twice, and send eight studio albums to No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart. Muse’s story was, at its core, about treating musical ambition as an asset rather than something to be managed down.