This week’s song is the biggest single hit from the British stadium rock outfit. This is easily Muse’s most recognizable song, if by chance a person reading hasn’t heard it, just watch a sporting event or go out in public somewhere – odds are you’ll hear it at some point.

Uprising was the lead single from the 2009 album The Resistance. The album is a bit of a “space rock opera” that overall is a fair tip of the hat to Queen. Much of the album was influenced by George Orwell’s novel 1984, a sentence I just typed yesterday for the Album of the Week. The Resistance would become Muse’s best-performing album and Uprising their best-moving single.

Uprising is nothing complex at all, in fact it follows the “keep it simple, stupid” formula very well. It’s an effective rhythm with a keyboard line thrown in and some handclaps and a bit of riffing here and there. That’s really all there is to it, yet it all feels and sound pretty expertly crafted. Muse had been on an “electro-stadium rock” path for awhile and Uprising feels like the culmination of those efforts.

Lyrically the song does go several shades deeper, it tackles the issue of governments and corporate powers controlling things and using misinformation, fear and paranoia to keep the general populace misinformed and in line. The song urges the rank and file citizen to recognize the charade and take power back. Something certainly born of both world events and the 1984 novel, though in both it would seem the powers that be won’t be swayed by popular rebellion.

As society has become more bitterly political and polarized over the years, Uprising has become an anthem for those that feel oppressed. The odd part of it all is that apparently everyone feels oppressed. I’ll refrain from going too hard into the political stuff but it would stand to reason that persecution and oppression are not visiting every person in the world. And not every dissenting viewpoint equals oppression, though in today’s political and social discourse it’s clear that many feel that way. As a note, Muse frontman Matt Bellamy disavowed the song’s use by right wing groups in the 2010’s.

While Uprising does offer bridges to these deeper, sometimes troubling and usually frustrating lines of thought, at its core it is really just a simple stadium anthem. It works extremely well over the PA at a sporting event and it catchy enough to easily earworm its way into someone’s head. No shock that this became a hit single.

Uprising did a tap-dance all over international charts, hitting singles charts in 20 countries and landing top 10’s in 7 of those, including their native UK. The song hit number 37 on the US Billboard Hot 100, marking Muse’s highest performance on that chart and in some technical sense actually garnering them “one hit wonder” status. It sold over 2 million in the US and has a host of gold and platinum certifications in 10 other countries.

But Uprising’s US fortunes can’t be summed up by just the pop chart. At the time Billboard also ran an Alternative Airplay chart and Uprising did an absolute number on that one. The song spent 17 weeks at number 1 and 52 weeks total on the chart, which at the time based on chart rules forced the song off for a week. Then it re-entered the chart the very next week. The 17 weeks at number 1 is good for fourth all time in the history of the chart, and one of the songs above it is also a Muse song.

Uprising was Muse’s call to power and also their apex in the mainstream music scene. The group has gone on to record and tour the world several times over, but their simple act of rebellion has continued to ring out across speakers everywhere. Perhaps a deeper message was lost, but the beat is pretty infectious.