Muse

To get a sense of where Muse is coming from, consider that in 2016 the band was venturing to design a stage made of magnets so it would look like they were flying—like superheroes. The stage never happened, but the point stands: Few bands go as shamelessly big as Muse. Formed in Devon, England, in the mid-’90s, the trio fashioned themselves as a modern answer to ’70s prog, mixing Queen-like arena rock with electronic music and glam, layering their sound with narratives about drone warfare, government oppression, the idea that we’re all just lines of code living in a program we call reality—blockbuster fantasies that restored rock to a state of wide-eyed wonder. Though their approach has shifted and evolved over the years (the classical inflections of 2003's Absolution, the hard rock of 2015’s Drones, the electro sheen of 2018’s Simulation Theory), the core of their sound has stayed the same: Take something big and make it bigger. Still, the band has always maintained a good sense of humor about themselves. Speaking to Apple Music in 2015, singer Matt Bellamy recalled a night when bassist Chris Wolstenholme literally got stuck in an elaborate stage platform during a show—what Bellamy called “the Spinal Tap moment.” “There’s a seriousness in what we do,” Bellamy said. “There’s also an irony as well. And we always oscillate between those two things, and create something a bit different than both those things.” In 2022, they released their ninth studio album, Will of the People.