Jump to content
Muse

Did Muse just "ebow the letter" the 2nd Law and their commercial viability?

rockmuse1

By rockmuse1
in Songs & Releases

Recommended Posts

rockmuse1 Escapee

rockmuse1

Posted
Posted

Quick history.... In 1997 R.E.M. was at the peak of their career after 8 studio albums and was still riding high when their new album "New adventures in Hi-Fi" was set to release. Despite the album being full of commercially viable songs, the band decided to release the artistic and languid "Ebow the Letter" as their first radio single. Although a nice beautiful song, the song tanked commercially which only made their second single less palatable for radio play. Once they lost the momentum they never got it back with that album or others in the future.

 

I'm suggesting that the ridiclous idea to release Madness as their first single may prove analogous.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Arcade Escapee

Arcade

Posted
Posted
Quick history.... In 1997 R.E.M. was at the peak of their career after 8 studio albums and was still riding high when their new album "New adventures in Hi-Fi" was set to release. Despite the album being full of commercially viable songs, the band decided to release the artistic and languid "Ebow the Letter" as their first radio single. Although a nice beautiful song, the song tanked commercially which only made their second single less palatable for radio play. Once they lost the momentum they never got it back with that album or others in the future.

 

I'm suggesting that the ridiclous idea to release Madness as their first single may prove analogous.

 

Not sure.. if anything to me, it seems they still strive to reel in new fans..

With The Resistance they should have put MK Ultra out as one of their first songs as that was a pure belter.

 

With The 2nd Law, Unsustainable (if slightly longer) would also have been the song to really launch the album, grab new fans by the throat, shake them about and take them on the journey with the single releases. Its good that Fans/boardies etc got to hear that first but 'the kids' should also have had that same experience.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Niall Dead Star

Niall

Posted
Posted

I guess we're rolling with the pretending Survival didn't happen universe then.

 

It's not surprising someone would wonder this given the poor chart performance so far in Europe (although 8 on the Billboard rock charts is respectable, eve if this song is barely rock).

 

I guess we won't know until we hear the album how good an analogy this is. The rest of the album may be a lot less radio friendly. I don't think it works for the single though as Madness is quite an upbeat, catchy sounding song and E-Bow is not at all, so in those terms I'd say Madness had the signs of being commercially viable. Why it failed to chart well in the first week is odd though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Dockertae Escapee

Dockertae

Posted
Posted
Survival was not the official first single.

 

I'm with Niall on this one. I might feel differently if the Madness release had a b-side, or a physical version or anything to distinguish it, but as it is the releases are pretty much identical - you can download the single track from itunes or muse.mu and that's it.

 

Saying it's the first "official" single means about as much to me as if you said Uprising was the official 12th song on The Resistance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Jobby Defector

Jobby

Posted
Posted
I'm with Niall on this one. I might feel differently if the Madness release had a b-side, or a physical version or anything to distinguish it, but as it is the releases are pretty much identical - you can download the single track from itunes or muse.mu and that's it.

 

Saying it's the first "official" single means about as much to me as if you said Uprising was the official 12th song on The Resistance.

 

I assume the physical release is coming soon, maybe at the same time the video gets released. Hopefully, it'll have some form of b-side too, whether that be a radio edit, remix or (ideally, but unrealistically) an original song. Something's better than nothing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Museic Syndrome Escapee

Museic Syndrome

Posted
Posted
I'm with Niall on this one. I might feel differently if the Madness release had a b-side, or a physical version or anything to distinguish it, but as it is the releases are pretty much identical - you can download the single track from itunes or muse.mu and that's it.

 

Saying it's the first "official" single means about as much to me as if you said Uprising was the official 12th song on The Resistance.

 

Yeah but if the Olympics didn't happen, Survival wouldn't be first to be released. And I believe that the band consider it a first single, so they would any way choose it to be the first single....

Link to comment
Share on other sites
SoberBaby Escapee

SoberBaby

Posted
Posted
Agreed. It has plenty of views on youtube and it is often played on the radio in my area. I think it'll receive more recognition once the video is out.

 

Plus, Muse didn't really become commercialy friendly until OOS and even then they weren't amazingly huge.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
serpentsatellite Escapee

serpentsatellite

Posted
Posted

I care a bit more about Muse's commercial success, as it's directly related to my chances of ever getting to see them live again...

 

Hopefully the label finds some way to at least *attempt* to inform the US that there's a new album...

The SNL is a step in the right direction, I guess... but does anyone watch that anymore?!?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...