Having headlined a bunch of European festivals last year and done a massive arena tour, Muse were the strikingly obvious headliner of Reading and Leeds 2017. 

Despite that, I personally was most excited for their set – Muse are known to put on incredible shows after all.

As festival attendees were still recovering from Liam Gallagher, suddenly the lights went down and red lasers shot from the stage. The show had begun.

Legendary trio from Devon, fronted by Matt Bellamy in neon glasses, started with their brand new song Dig Down, a hopeful message to the world which has been so full of negativity lately. “When God decides to look the other way / And a clown takes the throne / We must find a way / Face the firing squad / Against all the odds / You will find a way.”

There were all kinds of people in the crowd: British adults who grew up listening to Muse, devoted fans who had travelled from different corners of the world to line across the barrier, Oasis fans unsure why they are still in the arena, and mostly people like myself who were just there to see what happens.

With psychedelic visuals and sound effects, Muse got to the more familiar hits, Plug In Baby and Hysteria only followed by a riff outro from AC/DC’s Back In Black. Unfortunately, we up north had to do with just the outro, as only Reading Festival was lucky enough to get the whole cover with AC/DC’s very own Brian Johnson on stage (first time since 2010 for Muse, and Johnson’s first live performance in nearly 2 years!).

The headliners continued to be generous with the stunning special effects throughout their whole set; even if you are not a Muse fan, you can’t deny that it was a beautiful show to watch! The ending of Mercy covered the crowd with confetti shaped like the humans from the Drones‘ artwork (did anyone else imagine Matt, Dom and Chris thoroughly cutting out every piece of paper backstage before their set?), and the political Take A Bow started with a quiet and dark set up only to explode into a mesmerising laser show. “Absent gods and silent tyranny / We’re going under, hypnotized by another puppeteer / And tell me why the men in cloaks always have to bring me down / Running from the ghosts and shadows the world just disavows.”

Having played an exclusive “by-request setlist” show in London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire just days before Reading & Leeds, Muse were expected to bring out their less famous songs (apparently, fans of the band are getting seriously tired of Starlight and Supermassive Black Hole), and so they did with Showbiz that hadn’t been played since 2006 and Yes Please (second time since 2014).

The first day at Leeds Festival finished with the energetic Uprising and Muse‘s usual closing song – Knights of Cydonia. Fireworks filled the sky above the yellow stage, and the hardcore fans could finally detach themselves from the barrier. I caught myself wondering if it was worth it for them to stand there since 11AM. Having witnessed so much hype about the band in the past few weeks, I personally found the show underwhelming. As a headliner of such a big festival, you need more than pretty visual effects and pyrotechnics. The entire time Muse played, it felt as though something was missing, as though they were making a build-up to something grandiose but it never came.

As I was walking back to my tent in Bramham Park, I thought that maybe Liam Gallagher should have headlined this year instead.

Or maybe I just don’t get Muse.

Photos: Kasia Osowiecka