“Uprising” by Muse

song info

    “Uprising” by Muse (official video) is an alternative rock song.

    
    U.S. Billboard Hot 100: peak #37, 2009
    Rock: peak #2 (two), 2009 Alternative: peak #1 (one), 17 nonconsecutive weeks, 2009
    Adult Pop: peak #14, 2009
    Canadian Hot 100: peak #28, 2009
    Japan Hot 100: peak #12 (twelve), 2009
    United Kingdom: peak #9 (nine), 2009
     Billboard chart listings courtesy of Billboard Magazine

link to the static song information page for this song:
http://www.thissideofsanity.com/music/songs/up/uprising.php

    Summary quotation from Wikipedia:

    “Uprising” is a song by English rock band Muse, featured on their fifth studio album The Resistance. Written by lead vocalist and guitarist Matthew Bellamy, the song was released as the lead single from the album on 7 September 2009. The song remained at the #1 position on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart for 17 nonconsecutive weeks, and has become the band’s most successful song in the United States. The song was mixed by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent. It was also the last UK single to top an American chart for the 2000s, according to the 30 December 2009 Nielsen BDS alternative chart, and also the first UK single to top an American chart for the 2010s.

Background and composition

    The title “Uprising” was first revealed on 3 July 2009, when the album’s track listing was released sporadically on the band’s Twitter page; the song was unveiled as the opening track of the album, preceding the title track “Resistance”. In a pre-release review, French media source JudeBox described the song as follows:

Matt Bellamy’s voice is more serious and academic than usual. However it is delivered in a similar vein: Conspiracy, Apocalypse … He announces a “union”, speaks of “victory” that “they do not control.” Sound is still very heavy and dense, accompanied by mounted synthesizers. The structure of the song is simple for once.

    The song is often considered to be based on the hit Blondie song “Call Me”, because of the thumping bass line and the occasional lead guitar riff (Blondie have in turn referenced this in their live performances by singing the lyrics of “Call Me” whilst covering the music of “Uprising”, most notably at the RockNess festival in June 2010). However, “Uprising” can be argued to have more in common with the Black Sabbath song “Children of the Grave” which Blondie’s “Call Me” may have been based on. Many journalists have mentioned that “Uprising” is similar to the theme music for the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and the 1988 hit single “Doctorin’ the Tardis” by the KLF.

Music Video

    The music video, directed by American collective Hydra (Sam Stephens, John Hobbs, and others), first aired on MTV2 on 17 September 2009. The band performs through a miniature city in a small truck, with a lit fuse following behind. At times, they are also seen performing inside a trailer which seems to be exploding. Through the window of a TV shop the band at one point looks at TVs with teddy bears on the screens; Matt smashes the window and TVs with his guitar. At the end of the video a group of teddy bears (with small fangs, claws and reptilian eyes) rise up from the ground and start destroying the miniature city, only to fall down at the end of the video. This is said to pay homage to the climactic scene in Ghostbusters, one shot even mirroring the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man’s introduction.

    The video won “Best Special Effects” in the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, but lost “Best Rock Video” to 30 Seconds to Mars’s “Kings and Queens”.

—from Wikipedia (the Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License applies to Wikipedia’s block of text and possible accompanying picture, along with any alterations, transformations, and/or building upon Wikipedia’s original text that ThisSideofSanity.com applied to this block of text)

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