Algorithm

“Algorithm” opens Simulation Theory the way the album’s whole concept demands: a classical-romantic piano figure that sounds like it wandered in from a Rachmaninoff recital, dissolving into 1980s synths and video-game arpeggios before Matt Bellamy’s falsetto shows up to describe, in his own words, “an intelligence, be it human or artificial, that realises that it lives in a simulated reality, and it is controlled by its creator.” It’s a big, unsubtle thesis statement, delivered with the maximalist arena-rock instincts Muse has never once tried to hide.

The song mostly earns the swagger. Producer Rich Costey and the band build the track around a genuine collision – classical piano runs, arcade-game bleeps, and a chorus scaled for a stadium – that critics accurately compared to Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy score, and Bellamy has called it his own favorite on the record for exactly that friction between “retro-synth and futuristic stuff.” It doesn’t always resolve the tension so much as ride it; the back half leans harder on spectacle than on the anxious, controlled-from-outside idea the lyric sets up, and by Muse’s own catalog of technology-paranoia tracks, this one is more mood than argument.

That’s a fair trade for what the song is actually for: a table-setter, not the album’s thesis in miniature. As an opener, it does its job – announces the record’s whole retro-futurist palette in four minutes and gets out before the idea overstays.

7.2/10 – a well-built mood piece about losing control to an algorithm that, eight years after release, turned out to be more prophetic about Muse’s own year than anyone involved could have planned for.

Hero image: “Simulation Theory” single artwork, Warner Bros. Records. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.