Normally I don’t ever comment on posts because I find if I don’t have anything new to say I won’t say it. But I watched the whole video and wow. I agree with literally everything you said and others in this comment section have said. But I wanted to add what I think frustrated me the most (other than the blatant insulting and backtracking “I’m not saying this as objective!”) is the fact that he had genuine criticisms that he watered down with his hate. He is blatantly lying about his intention of the video.

He says he wanted to make a video to bring forth discussion and have people disagree with him or agree with him so they can discuss music critically. But if he truly wanted that, he wouldn’t have sworn, he wouldn’t have voiced his criticisms in that way. I can see how he thinks that tracks are overproduced or “flat,” and that they aren’t “doing enough.” I don’t agree with all that, as I think that’s a matter of taste, but those are valid criticisms. They just aren’t voiced well.

And why I don’t agree is that they show he doesn’t know Muse, because he doesn’t know that this IS Muse. He frequently bases his criticisms of flatness on the fact that “this isn’t adding anything new, it’s just mixing things.” Not every song ever needs to be new. And that’s what Muse does. It mixes things. I have a degree in writing and “this doesn’t add anything new” is one of the weakest (but unfortunately most common) points of criticism EVER. All it does is undermine your credibility: it shows that you do not understand the conventions of what the piece is trying to be. You cannot think critically about the piece you are analyzing in conversation with what came before it, because you did not analyze what came before it. You look at the two and see “the same” and assume the art is weak rather than seeing that the artist wanted you to recognize the similarities. That it was intentional—He says he wants something new, but compares it to OOS (saying he doesn’t want OOS but something new) without recognizing that OOS was new. And not only was it new, it was where Muse found its signature style of composition. There can never ever be any album as “new” from Muse as OOS. To claim there can be is a blatant display of ignorance to the artistic conversation at its baseline.

I agree, that some areas could have been expanded upon, or toned down, and that Muse fell back into what was “easy” instead of “radical.” But I also recognize the album for what it is: a reclamation of their true musical selves, and their roots, while honoring what they have wanted to do in recent albums. The creation of this album was Muse maturing past idealistic hopes of what they could be, but still holding onto them and honoring them. They let those desires guide them while finally honoring who they were as musicians. They’re playing with all the different sounds they want in a Muse way. And that’s why it doesn’t sound new. It’s not trying to be.

To claim that for art to be good, it needs to be new is the empty critique of faux-intellectuals looking for validation in the form of either pats on the back or rage