AFTER years of writing about politics, technology and the chaos of the modern world, Matt Bellamy wanted something different for Muse’s tenth album.
“The theme was to get back into mystery a little bit,” he says. “The mysteries of the universe, mysteries of spirituality and returning to the rawness of the unknown.”
Inspired by the 1977 Wow! Signal — an unexplained radio signal from space once seen as possible evidence of alien intelligence — and a turbulent period in his personal life, the record finds Bellamy searching for meaning on both a cosmic and personal level.
“I’ve turned completely apolitical,” he admits. “It’s weird when you go through things in your personal life — the news just becomes an annoying noise.
“When your life’s going great, you get drawn into the news and what’s going on in the world.
“But when you’re actually going through something yourself, the news and politics just become a headache.
“I’m a little bit gloriously out of touch. I’ve normally been so in touch, my finger’s always been on the pulse, and a lot of the albums I’ve made talk about the rise of populism. But this album and my life for the last year-and-a-half has been different.”
Bellamy has split from US model Elle Evans, his wife of six years, who he quietly separated from in October 2025.
“I’ve been through a separation involving two young kids,” he says carefully.
“I can’t really talk about the reasons behind it, but it was not your normal run-of-the-mill situation. I became a full-time single parent for a period of eight months.
“She’s doing a lot better now and she’s getting better, but it was an unusual situation to go through. It made writing the album so much easier.
“It’s hard to talk about what’s behind the album because I don’t throw people under the bus. And I don’t want my kids to grow up reading stuff.”
Bellamy, 48, is in London for band rehearsals and when we meet, he’s just back from the gym in a bid to shape up for the tour.
“I’m not that old,” he laughs. “But I met Mick Jagger at a party and I went straight in on the fitness. I was, like, ‘What is your secret?!’ He said when he was in his 30s, he started working out a few weeks before a tour.
“By the time he got to his 40s, he was working out for the same length as the tour.
“If it was a three-month tour, he’d work out for three months before. And by the time he got to his 50s, he was just working out all the time, all year round.”
The 1977 Wow! Signal fascinates Bellamy because it remains unexplained and happened around the time the band members were born.
“The Wow! Signal is probably, to this day, still the most interesting signal that’s ever been seen in space,” he explains.
“It happened in 1977, which is basically within 12 months of all the band being born.
“Chris [Wolstenholme] and I were born in 1978 and Dom [Howard] in 1977, so I just thought it was funny that this little Wow! Signal appeared around the time we came into this world.
“I think this album was really me letting go a little bit and engaging with the unknown.
“What is this thing inside me, or all of us, that wants to not be alone? I don’t mean with a partner or friends. I mean this thing in the universe. At the moment, we appear to be so alone, and we have this drive, which you see through religion and science.
“Behind all of it, we just don’t want to be alone.”
That search drew Bellamy back to one of his formative influences.
“I grew up watching Contact, the Jodie Foster film from the 90s,” he says. “I used to read Carl Sagan’s books and that film really stayed with me.”
It has also led him into the world of AI.
He adds: “I’ve spent time in the tech world, in California’s Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, and I had some involvement in that world.
“I went to a private talk where Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) was talking off the record about his thoughts on AI.
“I saw (Meta CEO Mark) Zuckerberg talking about it, too, and I was interested in what they were saying.
“When you really hear them, they know they’re ushering in an intelligence which is beyond us. They start to see it as, ‘Well, we’re just kind of messengers bringing in this thing that is going to be more intelligent than us’.”
Bellamy says he enjoys asking AI philosophical questions — and that is where Hexagons began.
“That’s actually my favourite thing to do with AI, and where I got the idea for Hexagons,” he says. “And again, I think that is part of the same human condition.
“Whether it be religion, looking for aliens in space or trying to bring in artificial intelligence, it’s kind of all the same thing.”
Epic, organ-led Be With You was the first song that made the album’s direction clear.
“You can look at it as a love song, or you can look at it as a religious song, almost,” he says.
“I’m not a religious person, but I decided to play the song on a church organ.
“I went to the biggest church organ in Los Angeles, so the song was recorded in this church-like setting.
“I liked the idea that it could be perceived as searching for alien life, or searching for alien intelligence of some kind, or God. That was the first song that felt right, lyrically and musically.
“There are a lot of personal elements in the album that are quite unusual for me.”
Bellamy says the album came from a difficult period, but that made the music flow.
“This was actually the easiest album for me to write and make for 15-plus years,” he says.
“Space Debris is probably the biggest reveal of what I went through, especially lyrically at the end,” he says.
“It’s the rawest moment of explaining what really happened over the last year. I like using space analogies — space debris, things breaking up and falling apart in gravity — to describe the chaos and feeling in your life.
“It also fits the theme of connecting this search into outer space for a higher power with the chaos and feeling in your own life.
“I hope the fans don’t ask me to play that one live.”
If Space Debris is the album’s rawest confession, Bellamy says it also opened the door to bigger questions running through the record.
“What I went through threw me off into the unknown,” he explains.
“When things go wrong in your life, that’s when you’re most likely to seek meaning or search for answers.
“In my case, it was a blend between religious thought, alien intelligence and AI.
“I don’t know what it is, but you’re searching for this higher power to guide you, or to give you answers.
“Music became my catharsis. It became my way to understand my situation.
“Making this album gave me flashbacks to these periods where music was my everything.
“It wasn’t something I had to do to pay the bills. It wasn’t something I had to do for the record label. It was something that I had to do for myself.
“That’s why I think this album is probably, since the 2000s anyway, the most raw, emotionally raw and honest album I’ve done.”
Bellamy says despite the personal nature of the album, Chris and Dom were central to every song.
“I’ve always been in charge of the lyrics, and I’m the leader in terms of the concepts,” he says.
“But musically, this is the most equal album we’ve had for a long time.”
The Wow! Signal includes some of the best tracks Muse have made in years.
Cryogen has already been compared to early Muse, while Shimmering Scars shows off the vulnerability in Bellamy’s voice.
“Cryogen is deliberately Muse from 2001,” he says.
With Shimmering Scars, he explains: “I felt like I needed to do five or six takes, so we could edit the best bits in.
“But producer Dan Lancaster was, like, ‘Nah, let it be raw, let it be weird.’
“To me, it sounded a bit off — not quite what I wanted it to be. But he was, like, ‘No, that’s the whole point. That sounds a little bit raw’.
“This is the first album where we said, ‘Let’s give Dan a go at producing it’. The last two albums were self-produced, so it was nice to hand the reins to someone else.
“He did a great job keeping us towards that more raw, vulnerable state in the performances.”
Bellamy believes AI is pushing younger listeners back towards authenticity.
“My stepson with Kate [Hudson], Ryder, is 22 and he’s just graduated from NYU,” he says. “Then Bing is 14, and I’ve got the two little ones as well.
“Having a boy who’s 22 and a boy who’s 14 means I get a real sense of what’s going on in their generation.
“I think that generation is turning away from pop, hip-hop and dance a little bit. They’re seeking raw, chaotic-sounding music.
“I think the reason why is because that generation is drowned by AI. AI is dominating everything they do, from schoolwork to music and the arts.
“I could be wrong but from what I sense from them, they’re gravitating towards what they know to be real.”
Recent single Nightshift Superstar was the band wanting to go French disco.
“I love Daft Punk, Justice and ABBA,” Bellamy says. “I went to see ABBA’s show and I loved it. They’re some of the best songs ever written. So after that and seeing Justice in Paris, I was, like, ‘How do we do that? Let’s just go there’.
“The song has a late-70s feel but with a more cutting-edge tone associated with modern dance music.
“But the good thing about it is that it really is us playing.”
One surprise on The Wow! Signal is Hush — a collaboration with pop star Ellie Goulding.
“Ellie was in the studio next-door, working with Marshmello on something,” says the singer.
“We have known each other for years and always wanted to try and do something together.
“Muse fans will read online that we’ve done a song with Ellie Goulding and think it’s going to be a pop song.
“But it’s got one of the biggest, heaviest riffs we’ve done in a long time. To me, it sounds a bit like New Born or something from 2001.
“The verses get a little bit poppy, I guess, but the main riff is pretty hard rock, so I thought it was quite fun to get Ellie’s voice over that kind of heaviness.
“I think it’ll be a nice surprise.”
Bellamy says the song came together by chance.
“This was an experiment,” he says. “It’s the only song on the album that really involves multiple writers.
“Ellie popped her head in towards the end of the day, at about 11pm, and went, ‘Hey, what are you guys up to?’ We played the song and she said, ‘Oh, can I sing on it?’ We tweaked the lyrics and turned it into a duet.
“It came completely by chance. It wasn’t planned to be a collaboration.”
Bellamy says the reaction from Muse fans to the new songs has “been the best we’ve had for at least 15 years” and he’s looking forward to getting back on the road following their special Brixton Academy show in April to launch the album.
The show marked Muse’s first appearance at the venue in 25 years, just before the release of Origin of Symmetry.
“I didn’t realise it had been so long,” Bellamy says.
“I remember the last time we played there, it was around the second album and I was so nervous because it was the biggest show Muse had ever done.
“We got to debut Be With You for the first time, and we had a great time.”
Visually, Bellamy says the full Wow! Signal world will come to life properly when Muse return to Europe in November.
“The American tour starts with what I’d call a medium-level production,” he says.
“But when we come to Europe, including London and Manchester in November, that’s when we’re going to ramp it up to a really sophisticated production.
“I think there’ll be a lot of geometry, a lot of hexagons, shapes and lasers, and strange, interesting visuals.
“Hopefully we’ll build the spaceship you see on the album cover in the arena.”
- The album The Wow! Signal is out today.