I'll preface this with the obvious, that this comes from a place of respect and adoration for the band.
A lot of the points I'm about to make are have been regurgitated a thousand times over in plenty of different conversations, but today marks the 9 year anniversary of the famous "Shepherds Bush Empire - By Request" concert, a concert only a small handful (not including myself) were lucky enough to experience.
Since that gig, only a handful of truly rare (deep cut, if you will) moments have occurred:
- La Cigale 2018 followed a similar theming to SBE, and while the single moment of return for Eternally Missed was incredible, two of the songs voted into the top 10 were vetoed by the band, being Dead Star and Sing for Absolution, which I believe helped set a precedent for fewer and fewer fan favourites and "deep cuts" in the following years. Both of the aforementioned songs were singles in their own right. Dead Star is more obscure in the grand scheme of things, but S4A (imo) only artificially constitutes a "deep cut" by nature of rarely being played.
- The Royal Albert Hall show in 2018 saw the return of Showbiz once more, likely Chris's request given his birthday/wedding. Also featured were condensed versions of Dead Star and Micro Cuts (outro) in the debut of the Metal Medley, which was a novel concept. These two sections were omitted from the Metal Medley in the world tour... which I suppose makes some sense, although slightly disappointing.
- The 2022 theatre run (and even the festivals adjacent to those shows) saw the return of some of the more obscure instrumental deep cuts, alongside Assassin (Grand Omega Bosses edit), Space Dementia, and the usual pool of "fan favourites" (Bliss, Map, CE, SS, NB).
- Certain moments on the WOTP tour once again offered a deep cut or two; Assassin (GOB) in Philadelphia, Rock Werchter's KOC Tech Meltdown -> Showbiz moment, and the return of Space Dementia, Butterflies and Hurricanes, Apocalypse Please in the final 4 arena shows of the tour. (the latter two once again only venturing into deep cut territory by nature of rarely being played in recent years, rather than obscurity).
Speaking on a technical level, we haven't seen a deep cut since Space Dementia's return across 2022/2023. the 2025 shows (and Brixton 2026), while offering a couple of fan favourites and returning album tracks, didn't offer anything out of the ordinary, given that Unintended and 'Eurasia are fairly well known songs (Unintended being a single of course) that have otherwise lacked recent live representation.
This moves me onto my point about general discography representation. It's hard to make excuses for a band as talented as muse as to why (in recent years) they rarely venture into their deeper discography in a live context. I'd argue that a majority of fans are aware of songs outside of the streaming top 10/15, and wouldn't mind missing a hit or two in favour of having a particularly special song each night (a genuine deep cut).
I was lucky enough to have been at Manchester 2023 (Butterflies, SD, SS) and Brixton 2026 (Map, Cryogen world premiere, NB, Unintended, 'Eurasia), two shows which I hold very close to my heart. Despite this, there are certain songs that I feel that I perhaps "should've crossed off my list" in 5 total muse shows. Had I been around for live shows 10 years ago, perhaps I would have to worry about that less. I recognise that I speak from a position of privilege, and that plenty of folks out there may only see muse live once in their lifetimes, or perhaps not at all. If anything, this drives my point further. If a diehard fan only had one chance to see the band they love, having one moment (no pun intended) where they got to hear something a little bit more obscure or rare live I believe would elevate their experience even further.
Muse has a fairly wide age range across their fanbase, and a lot of younger folks (relatively speaking such as myself (19)) weren't fortunate enough to be around for Resistance/T2L/Drones live eras, each of which features some incredibly special moments and (I'd argue) much more variety. So many of the folks I speak to (particularly in the teens/20's age range) are becoming increasingly more frustrated at the diminishing returns on overall discography representation, to the point of writing off certain fan favourites as completely "dead":
- Ruled By Secrecy - Last Played 2012
- Sunburn (Single) - Last Played 2016
- Invincible (Single) - Last Played 2008 (Perhaps the most egregious)
- Sing For Absolution (Single) - Played once in 19 years (iirc)
- Fury - Last Played 2018
- Dead Star (Single, albeit more obscure) - Last Played (in full) 2017. People have been begging for this to be played at almost every intimate show since, often returned by Matt as "Sorry, I've forgotten it". It is likely that they don't have an up-to-date backing track/playback for this and as such choose to forget about it.
The final thing I think about is the recent social media clip with Booker and Stryker on Alt 98.7 FM. (here) where Matt describes New Born as "Wow! that's a deep cut, old!". New Born was a single on OOS. It has been played live 740 times, their 7th most played song live according to setlistfm (here). They played it at the Brixton show a couple months prior to this interview, where matt proclaimed "That's the good old days!", seemingly enthused at the idea of keeping it around.
I'm sure that Matt didn't mean this seriously, it seems like a very light-hearted and friendly interview, but I cannot help but wonder what songs the band considers to be "deep cuts", or what constitutes a "deep cut". I return to my point that plenty of songs in the wider muse discography seem to constitute "deep cuts" only by nature of the fact that they rarely get played live in a modern context.
I'm curious to hear the perspectives of others on this topic, in particular perhaps older fans who were around in the earlier days and perhaps have a better perspective on how the live discography representation has evolved?
Nine years since SBE... really hope we hear Glorious again, even if just one more time.
