"Dead Inside" by Muse, Wednesday, November 17, 2021

English rock band Muse has been making dystopian concept albums since 2009's The Resistance. Their third concept album, Drones, has a more fleshed out story than the previous records. Reacting to world governments' increased usage of drones to carry out covert military operations, the album imagines a scenario in which soldiers are conditioned to "kill with no remorse," ultimately becoming a human drone, furthering only the government's cause. By the end of the album, the protagonist wakes up to the manipulation and defects. The album topped Billboard's Hot 200 album charts and the world tour was filmed and shown in theaters around the globe. 

YOUR LIPS FEEL WARM TO TOUCH. As a three-person band, Muse has packed a lot into their sound. The band wanted Drones to be a departure from their symphonic sound they created on The Resistance and The 2nd Law, working with producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange to return to a hard rock sound. Lange came to fame for breaking AC/DC into the American rock scene and his production on classic rock albums from Foreigner to Def Leppard can be felt within Drones. However, the producer's pop sensibility comes into focus on the opening track of Drones. Lange also produced many pop artists in the '80s and '90s from Bryan Adams and Tina Turner to the Backstreet Boys and ex-wife Shania Twain. But there's something flashy about "Dead Inside" like tracks that Lange produced for Lady Gaga. "Dead Inside" sounds like a hipster pop song. It could feel out of place or even an embarrassing attempt of dad-rockers to try to sound relevant. But it's too catchy and Muse pull off the ironic pop-atmosphere seamlessly. They would flirt with synth-pop on their next record, Simulation Theory, but for the pop influences, "Dead Inside" is the first and last of the band's venture into pop on Drones.

RELEASE A MILLION DRONES. The title comes from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, of which the album owes much of its inspiration. At the end of the novel, Winston surrenders to O'Brian, who tells him: "Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity." I had a coworker who always used to say she felt "dead inside," mainly when reacting to stupid decisions at my previous job. Taking a look at the song out of its directly intended context, it's pretty relatable. We can certainly criticize the Bush/Obama/ Trump/Biden administrations for pulling off drone strikes, sometimes even killing innocent civilians. We can criticize unjust wars. But it's part of a larger problem. Orwell sets up a world in Nineteen Eighty-Four in which the people are brainwashed to believe the lies that the government has in place. They are told narratives, which to us as readers, these narratives are nonsense, but to the characters in the fictional world, they fully believe without questioning, except for when Winston gets a moment of lucidity. The easiest thing to do is to follow the narratives, and Big Brother fights against those who question its values. The novel makes us think about whether or not we know the truth or if we are subjects to propaganda. But the government may not be the only entity brainwashing us. It could be the company we work for. We may have seen that the company does some pretty stuff, but we all need to collect a paycheck, right? It could be religion. The Bible says X, so why does my church do Y? Follow along and you'll be dead inside.

Official Music Video:

Lyric Video:

Read “Dead Inside” by Muse on Genius