A Review of Two New Albums
I have no idea if these two individuals know each other in reality. I suppose I could Google it. For all I know, Matt Bellamy and Sarah Brightman are already dear friends, and a search would yield entire coffee table books of the two dancing through the bluebells with linked pinkies.
I’m sure if they met, they’d be best friends. The kind of love that they write epics about.
They have so much in common.
Sarah Brightman’s Hymn is the latest in her one-word album titles opening with a dreamy instrumental building energy into a crescendo of upbeat pop-like music (in the way that only Sarah Brightman does pop-like music). She dips into crooning melodies and soars into belting arias and leaves you with a track so upbeat your dentures might pop out when you ask Iris to start the record over.
Are we ever tired of listening to Sarah Brightman’s operatic blasts? She remains, decades after playing the ingenue in her then-husband’s Phantom of the Opera, a voice to be reckoned with. She hasn’t lost an ounce of her power. She also hasn’t gained an ounce of power—or ambition, for that matter. To be fair, it’s hard when you start out in pop music with an anachronistic hit as divine as I Lost my Heart to a Starship Trooper, and songs like Fly to Paradise just don’t stand a chance. They lack the gusto.
I don’t think Sarah’s recurring vision is without self-awareness. Hymn ends with yet another iteration of Time to Say Goodbye—distinguished from previous outings of this (fantastic, amazing, flaw-free) song only by the fact that it’s entirely in English this time. She knows what people want from her, and she’s happy to deliver it again. And again. And again.
Matt Bellamy, with Muse, is much the same on a shorter time scale. He has remade the same album for the last four albums, proving that you really shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken. The Resistance was prescient for 2009; it remained timely when his electronic beats, melodrama, and anti-establishment brand of orchestral pop-rock turned into 2012’s marvelous The Second Law. It felt a little tired by the time that his one and only style of modern album was reincarnated in 2015’s Drones, but it’s fresh again in Simulation Theory. Still, the only real addition is jumping feet-first into synthwave—half the songs would sound wholly appropriate on the soundtrack for next season of Stranger Things—whereas the remainder of the auditory elements are shamelessly rehashed. Listen to Madness (off The Second Law) and then Propaganda (off the new album). They strike different emotional notes, but it’s impossible to ignore the similarities, even when you’re rocking the eff out to the splendiferous drama of Propaganda.
Like I said, if it’s not broken, you don’t have to fix it. These two musical artists know what they’re offering. You can see it as good branding. You can see it as overproduction. You can see it as loyalty to style. However you like to view it, I bet Matt and Sarah would have a great time talking about their reincarnated-into-infinity artistic style over drinks, and I really hope it happens someday. What I’d give to be the fifth generation of a near-identical fly on the wall for that conversation.
