Muse - Stockholm Syndrome
okay, so, this is the first post in this blog and I would like to make it really interesting so I’m going to choose a song I really really care about and hopefully I’ll have something smart to say about it.
most of my friends know that I adore Muse. I guess my love for them started approx 3 years ago (so I’m a Muse-n00b but I love them as much as any old fan.. I guess) and even though the first wave of “OMG THIS BAND IS AWESOME” is gone, I still have them in my heart and am hoping for the flame to relight itself with their new album, The Resistance, coming out September 14 2009.
so the song I chose for this time is Stockholm Syndrome. The favorite song of what, 75% of the Muse fan community? they have a reason, I tell ya.
so as for me, personally, this song found it’s way to me (or is it the other way around) at a time when I wasn’t exactly depressed but in a rather bad place in my oh-so-teenage life. I had problems with a then-best-friend of mine, I was stuck doing something that I didn’t want to do – taking piano, music history, accompaniment, music theory etc. lessons at a music school I hated from the bottom of my heart. mostly because the teachers took me for a genius from the start – I really do not know why – and had high expectations and would send me off to various competitions (when did music as an art become a competition anyway? another topic to discuss..) and shows to perform without asking for my permission, I didn’t really have a say in it. sometimes it even happened that as I walked past the info board, which I always scanned, I’d discover my name on a concert ad I didn’t know I had to perform at. I was tired of practicing but was supposed to practice every day to actually learn the stuff by heart and play it like the virtuoso they advertised me as. it sounds like any other teenager’s drama but I swear, that autumn 2006 I cried every fucking time I left the building of the music school (and put on my Nightwish CD to soothe my mood in my dad’s car, but this stuff is for another post) and had second thoughts every time I had to enter the building. whenever I hadn’t practiced, I would get the lecture of “I am so disappointed in you” by my teacher – she never yelled. come to think about it, I would have preferred yelling.
so what has Stockholm Syndrome got to do with it?
it was the song on my little green Creative Zen V Plus. music school used to start at 18:00 so after school I’d hang out with friends and then take the bus to music school. it was my favorite moment of the day – regardless of the fear of actually going to music school – to sit down, put my headphones on and put on Stockholm Syndrome, full volume of course.
the song starts with something that I’d call one of the best, most agitating, agressive riffs in their discography (I don’t say “one of the best riffs in the world” because these clearly belong to Rage Against The Machine) and there’s no fade-in, no count, no nothing, it just comes and kicks you in the face like that. and before you know it, the band kicks in and the drum beat is nothing special in itself (Dom the drummer himself has said that it’s his favorite song to play live because it’s so easy and he can watch the crowd a lot more) BUT THE BASS!!! omg. it makes these huge octave-crescendos which make me, personally, think of the end of the world. or my eardrums.
and then comes the aspect that has had many a Muse hater hate Muse even more (apart from the neverending “Muse imitate Radiohead” discussion which I will not bring up in this blog) – Matthew Bellamy’s soaring vocals.
the lyrics of the first verse:
I won’t stand in your way
let your hatred grow
and she’ll scream
and she’ll shout
and she’ll pray
and she had a name
yes she had a name
don’t try to tell me that this wouldn’t affect you if you had been in my situation. eyes closed, the dark automn-y Tallinn passing by (which is incredibly beautiful in it’s melancholy) and Matthew Bellamy singing to you how he won’t stand in your way and how you can scream and you can shout and you mean something, you are someone. this is what an emo-girl NEEDS to hear! and the way he sings “and she’ll scream and she’ll shout and she’ll pray” – for the “and she’ll”s he uses his powerful chest voice and then *click*, for “..scream, ..shout, ..pray” it’s this wonderful falsetto and he changes between those two like it was no big deal. I can’t do that and I’m a girl. and during Matt’s singing, there’s this constant agressive tom-drumming and I ADORE tom-drums. the music is powerful, because the guitar and the bass (which has now sticked to a constant descending line) mix up to make this agitating mass of sound that threatens to explode any minute. the lyrics of the second verse dont change that much, but this time Matthew uses “we” instead of “you” and reminds you that no matter how big your problems, no one cares anyway (”we’ll fly, we’ll fall, we’ll burn and no one will recall”).
and that’s when it gets seriously good.
I think Matthew Bellamy gives a whole new meaning to the word “bridge”. in music, of course. I don’t know if anyone has created a better organized chaos in music than the bridge of Stockholm Syndrome (note to self: make a post about Asobi Seksu – Red Sea and the mighty Wall of China Noise). and then on to the chorus, where Matt sings:
(falsetto) this is the last time (strong chest voice) I’ll abandon you
(falsetto) and this is the last time I’ll (strong, soaring chest voice) forget you
when I listened to this, I thought of all the abusive friendships I’d been in and decided to end a million of times but kept crawling back to these people because I was too clingy. I thought of ending it with music school and leaving for good and it made me feel good. those few seconds while Matt sung this, I imagined quitting and I was happy. and I felt like Matthew sang these lyrics from my very soul. especially when at the end of these two lines he screams
I WISH I COULD
which clearly indicates that yep, Matthew Bellamy is also a real person who knows that things don’t go that easy in life and you can’t cut people out of your life whenever you want it and he most probably knows you can’t quit music school just like that.. but I’m not sure, because being the musical genius he is, he didn’t even take piano lessons so I doubt he went to music school at all.
then there are some random filler-lines that don’t impress me that much – “look to the stars and let hope burn in your eyes“. Matt wouldn’t make a good motivational speaker because this is too cliché, even for me. but as I’m normally bedazzled by the awesomeness of this song, I don’t pay attention to these lines.
he does continue well, though, with “and we’ll love and we’ll hope and we’ll die, all to no avail” which injects even more hopelessness into this song (note to self: write about The Cure – Prayers for Rain, the most hopeless song ever).
and this is where the song loses it’s spark for me, at least for a while. it’s good, good rock – beautiful music – but I usually wander off and think my own thoughts (to which, Stockholm Syndrome is an awesome background music) for a while, until it’s time for Matt to scream the final “I WISH I COOOOOULD” and then break into the most crazy-ass, violent, groundbreaking riff to end the song. once when I saw them live in Riga, I am pretty sure Matt himself couldn’t resist the power of this song and he actually lay down and played the final riffs laying down with his eyes closed. Jon can confirm. although he wasnt, isn’t and probably never will be a fan of Muse, I think he appreciated this particular moment. after listening to this song on the bus, I always had to put on Teardrop by Massive Attack, as to calm down for the piano lesson.
Stockholm Syndrome was also my favorite song to put on at night when walking home from the train stop during my stay in Switzerland. if I put it on just in front of the Hotel de Ville, I’d arrive at my place right as the song ended. as there were no lights half of the way, I’d see stars most of the time (and voilà! the “look to the stars”-line gets a meaning) and it would be a great alone-moment to see the lake surrounded by city lights and the stars in the sky and the contour of the pre-Alpes eerily creeping through the soft layer of clouds. gosh, am I poetic or what?!
anyway, this song makes me feel epic. it makes me feel as if my life is epic, and if there’s an epic landscape to go with it, the better the effect. it makes me want to run and scream and sing along, because it’s liberating. yes, now I get it! after this 1600-long analyse, I get what this song does to me. it liberates me.
thank you, Muse, now I can go to sleep.
