Muse Defend Olympic Single

While Muse’s latest single, “Survival”, was released as the official anthem of the London 2012 Olympics, drummer Dom Howard insists that the track is not just a gimmick, and should be considered alongside the band’s other works. Speaking to NME, Howard offered the following comment:

“I’m happy with the song. It’s a proper Muse song. It’s not something we just did for the Olympics. They sowed a seed by asking us to do some music but then five months went by. We showed them a few songs when they asked us about [playing the] closing ceremony and they loved it. It represented the enormous competition of what the Olympics is”.

Muse will likely play the track when they perform at the Olympic closing ceremony on Sunday, which will celebrate 50 years of British music. The lineup for that event is a closely guarded secret. Muse, Ed Sheeran and George Michael are the only acts to have confirmed their appearances, although NME notes that The Who, Take That and the Spice Girls are rumoured to feature. It has also been speculated that Kate Bush might appear at the event, after a remix of her track “Running Up That Hill”appeared on, and was then subsequently removed from Amazon. If that were the case, it would be the singer’s first live performance since the late 1970s.

Muse’s new album, “The 2nd Law”, is scheduled for release on October 1st. The band has come under fire for the record before it has even been released after a trailer video posted online suggested that the album would feature dubstep influenced material. Matt Bellamy has compared the move to Rage Against The Machine’s approach in the 1990s:

“We’ve basically tried to do what Rage Against The Machine did with hip-hop in the 1990s and take a bit of the electronic world and dubstep and play it with real instruments”.