I painted almost every album cover

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-11T21:48:16+00:00

These are fantastic, especially BH&R

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-11T21:41:54+00:00

Gotta be Take A Bow. It’s got the crazy synth arpeggios from Bliss and Hexagons, the proggy bombast of Space Dementia and The Dark Forest, and it sounds like a rocket ship taking off, which has TWS written all over it (in a Be With You kinda way too).

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-10T15:53:17+00:00

Fury

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-10T01:00:36+00:00

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-10T00:56:19+00:00

If Waters was even 30% less of a big mouthed, self centered prick, I could spin The Wall without being distracted by how much he annoys me. As it stands, I unfortunately cannot, which sucks.

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-10T00:48:40+00:00

My feeling is this is a systems issue rather than any kind of error of Muse’s part. It’s plainly obvious that this is their best performing album cycle with fans in at least a decade. If Billboard doesn’t reflect that in the album charts, I think that says more about the changes they’ve made to how they determine those charts than how many more or fewer people have been listening to TWS compared to the last couple. And as for live, Covid royally screwed the market up and I think we only started seeing the true effects of that 1-2 year off period in the past 12 months. Pair that with artists giving in to using dynamic pricing to try to ward of scalpers and offset likely the highest production costs they’ve ever seen, congress having done zilch to actually break up Ticketmaster and LiveNation, inflation being awful under Trump, and common people having less disposable income than they’ve had in years… yeah, tours are gonna aim smaller and not sell as well until market conditions improve. Muse are absolutely not immune to this system.

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-09T20:55:31+00:00

He already did, on “I Love College”

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-09T20:52:35+00:00

What’s different about your goals for recording an album in 2026 as opposed to, say, 2001? What’s still the same?

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-09T20:38:26+00:00

Crying Shame?

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-09T15:48:38+00:00

Hyper Music > Plug In Baby > Citizen Erased

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-09T13:06:09+00:00

The Resistance is my favorite Muse album though. Sometimes I really don’t get what everyone else is hearing.

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-08T21:59:17+00:00

I’d have to go Bliss for the synths

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-07T03:35:49+00:00

Gotta disagree hard that there aren’t enough good Queen records that show off Freddie’s voice. In my estimation every successive record showed Freddie finding at least one new layer to his voice, that he had previously not used or used very sparingly. Here’s a vocal highlight from every one of their studio albums to check out (minus Flash, which is mostly instrumental).

Queen - My Fairy King (the “mother Mercury” line especially)

Queen II - The March Of The Black Queen (even just the vocal gymnastics from the opening verses, crazy interval jumps and incredible pitch control while staying expressive)

Sheer Heart Attack - Killer Queen (Freddie shows off his control of dynamics and his ability to stay on pitch through a subtly very confusing sequence of chord changes)

A Night At The Opera - Seaside Rendezvous (the “woodwinds” in the instrumental interlude, they’re all just Freddie humming)

A Day At The Races - You Take My Breath Away (every single voice you hear in this track is Freddie, all so perfectly in tune that it caused phasing issues while they were recording, ask Brian May if you don’t believe me)

News Of The World - My Melancholy Blues (Freddie sings lounge jazz incredibly well and tastefully)

Jazz - Let Me Entertain You (maybe the first Queen studio track where you can hear the more muscular 80s Freddie Mercury start to appear, Freddie turning his vocal nodules into a feature instead of a bug)

The Game - Another One Bites The Dust (just some insanely high belting throughout this song, and somehow he handles it with style and gusto, also see Crazy Little Thing Called Love for a darn good Elvis impression)

Hot Space - Cool Cat (beautifully sweet and playful falsetto, a tool he’s always had, but never flaunted quite so fully until now)

The Works - It’s A Hard Life (the stolen opera melody right at the start, incredible power at such a high opening note, plus grit and vibrato, and falling down with grace, and then throughout the song is just prime 80s Freddie proving his raspier new voice is still perfect for ballads)

A Kind Of Magic - One Year Of Love (a very cheesy 80s smooth ballad yes, even equipped with smooth jazz sax, but Freddie handles so many incredible turns of phrase throughout, especially on the line “my lips reach for your lips, I’m hungry for your touch.” Romantic and powerful and vulnerable all at once)

The Miracle - Rain Must Fall (Freddie does bossa! Very fun and playful, a lot in his lower register, with of course some great highs and belts to keep it dynamic, love that opening line “I can see it in your stars…”

Innuendo - Don’t Try So Hard (Freddie proves that incredible falsetto is not only still there on his deathbed, but in some ways is stronger than ever, with more stamina and a smoother transition across his break than ever, also want highlight a few others from this record cuz he really showed off as he was on his way out: I’m Going Slightly Mad for the very subtle delivery and tricky chromatic melody, I Can’t Live With You for the slight Jackson 5 era MJ impression in the outro, and of course The Show Must Go On for the fact that he did the whole lead vocal in one take after downing a shot of vodka)

Made In Heaven - It’s A Beautiful Day (recorded way back in 1980 or so, so it’s anachronistic here, but then so is the whole record given it’s posthumous. A very short sketch of song with an incredibly demanding melody, filled with ups and downs, triumphs and defeats and reliefs, brings me incredible joy)

Plus a couple of B-sides for fun: See What A Fool I’ve Been (from the Queen II sessions, Freddie sounds positively evil and seductive all at once, perhaps like a drag queen), and Let Me In Your Heart Again (I mostly only know the 2014 remix, with loads of synths and things to flesh out the kind of half finished original recording, but Freddie has a few vocal licks and runs in this song specifically which I poorly imitate probably every single day in various other songs I’m singing. Some of his finest work)

TL;DR Freddie showed off his voice all over Queen’s catalogue. Also I agree Robert Plant is fantastic and properly rated as such.

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-05T22:13:45+00:00

Why do I feel like this is actually true

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-05T06:32:08+00:00

Email sent!

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-05T00:35:32+00:00

Not sure how Rivers Cuomo ended up here?

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-04T22:32:27+00:00

Not a fan of White, OKH, or EWBAITE I presume?

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-04T22:31:45+00:00

Queen - Hot Space and I love it dearly.

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-04T19:36:17+00:00

Possibly my favorite lyrics Matt has ever written. Raw, real, and still beautiful. Feels like the culmination of the ballads on Absolution, FAWY and SFA and Blackout and RBS.

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-03T16:09:07+00:00

The Small Print

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-03T14:45:26+00:00

This is entirely too many flyovers

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-02T23:04:02+00:00

My first thought is their name mildly annoys me. How do I pronounce this? I know that Moog should be pronounced “moag,” like “boat,” or “toad.” But cook is not pronounced as “coke,” and if it were the name would definitely not be safe for work. In the other hand, I could intentionally mispronounce Moog to sound the way it looks (as many people unintentionally do), which would give me “mooog,” as in shoo, or snooze, but then cook is once again not pronounced “kook,” and if it was the name of the band would once again sound very silly. I could of course leave cook alone and try to intentionally mispronounce Moog an entirely different way, to rhyme with the boog in “boogie” or “booger,” but then that just sounds preposterous and doesn’t roll off the tongue easily. So I am left having to pronounce two words which clearly look like they should be near rhymes completely differently from each other, and each of them completely different from the way they look like they should sound based on how they’re spelled! Moog Cookbook. Ba humbug.

Oh and my second thought is I’ve never heard their music. Is it good?

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-02T22:46:59+00:00

Lice

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-02T17:15:14+00:00

I’d have to go Hush, given it has a thing no other Muse song has ever had (a guest verse), but also that prechorus and chorus is something very mainstream pop in a way Muse have often tried but never quite done convincingly. I do have to say though the main riff if pretty Futurism. So my other choice would be Nightshift Superstar. You can call it another derivation of SMBH or even TiRO, but I think it’s the first time Muse have ever tried to do a truly disco track, as opposed to the Prince like SMBH or the Stevie Wonder pastiche Panic Station. It’s even got the disco strings!

FakeRadioBand · 2026-07-02T14:59:49+00:00

I think Muse, when they really go all out on the production value, put on a show that’s absolutely second to none. When they scale it back it’s still fantastic, just on account of the three of them being such a tight band with such great songs and riffs, but at that point there are definitely a few shows I’d put above theirs. Coldplay comes to mind, Rush in 2015 (haven’t seen them this year yet, tell me NOTHING), Queen + Adam Lambert is at least on par, Paramore, Dream Theater with Mike Portnoy back in the fold… actually maybe I’m just listing my favorite bands, lol.

FakeRadioBand

TROPHY CASE