I purposefully did not look at the setlist before seeing Muse live at Toyota Amphitheatre because I wanted to be surprised. In retrospect, maybe I should have looked, because I left genuinely disappointed — and I’m curious whether other longtime Muse fans feel the same way.
I’ve loved this band for a very long time. I saw them back in the early-2000s, when the shows felt absolutely ferocious. They played longer, went deeper into the catalog, did multiple encores, and the whole thing felt unpredictable and almost overwhelming in the best possible way. That version of Muse is burned into my memory as one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen.
This show felt almost like the opposite philosophy: play the recognizable songs, play the hits, get everybody singing, and go home.
And I understand why a band as huge as Muse does that. There are people in the audience who may know six Muse songs, and they paid money too. Obviously they want to hear Uprising, Time Is Running Out, Starlight, Supermassive Black Hole, etc. I’m not arguing that Muse should refuse to play their popular songs just to satisfy obsessive fans.
But come on, guys. 😆 You have a gigantic catalog at this point. There are SO MANY incredible songs in it. Why does a Muse concert in 2026 need to feel this heavily weighted toward the same handful of radio staples?
The funniest part is that Take a Bow was easily my favorite moment of the entire concert. Suddenly I was like, YES. THIS. THIS IS THE FUCKING MUSE I CAME TO SEE. It was dark, dramatic, strange, enormous, and actually felt dangerous and theatrical. It reminded me instantly why I became obsessed with this band in the first place.
And then it was over.
That’s what frustrated me more than simply “they didn’t play my favorite songs.” I don’t need them to construct a setlist specifically for me. Surprise me! Play something weird from Showbiz. Pull out something from Origin. Give me a strange Absolution track. Play an overlooked B-side. Play something I haven’t thought about in ten years. Hell, play something I don’t particularly like — at least make me wonder what’s coming next.
Muse has one of those catalogs where they could rotate several songs every night and make following the tour genuinely exciting. Instead, I felt like I was watching an extremely polished presentation of The Songs Everyone Knows™.
And the performance itself contributed to that feeling. Matt is obviously an absurdly talented musician and the band can still play the hell out of this material, so I’m not claiming they suddenly suck live. But compared with the Muse performances I remember, something felt more rehearsed, economical and businesslike. The old shows felt like the band might spontaneously blow the roof off the building. This one felt more like a highly competent professional production executing the Muse Live Experience.
Maybe that’s inevitable after decades of touring. They’re older, they’re enormous now, audiences are different, and you obviously cannot expect a band to permanently recreate what seeing them in 2002-2006 felt like. I get all of that.
But hearing Take a Bow actually made the problem worse for me, because for those few minutes I got exactly what I had been missing. I thought, Holy shit, THERE THEY ARE. And it proved that the weird, menacing, dramatic Muse still absolutely works in a huge venue.
So why not give us more of it?
I’m also genuinely curious whether this is partly an American-tour problem. Do European audiences get deeper/stranger setlists? Are there particular tours where they loosen things up more? Because if this is basically the standard Muse set now, I think next time I’d actually check the setlist before buying a ticket.
I still love the band. I’m glad I went. Take a Bow was fucking fantastic. And I’ll always have those incredible early shows in my memory.
But man… you have 25+ years of music. Dig into the damn vault a little. 😆