Knights of Cydonia
by Muse
- 136
- BPM
- B minor
- Key
- 10A
- Camelot
- 37
- Danceability
- 0
- Acousticness
Muse first played "Knights of Cydonia" live at Radio 1's Big Weekend in Dundee on May 13, 2006, alongside "Supermassive Black Hole" and "Starlight". The title refers to the Cydonia region of Mars, where a rock formation looked like a human face. Live shows now open with a clip of Ennio Morricone's "Man With a Harmonica", with Chris Wolstenholme playing the harmonica part.
It closes the album Black Holes and Revelations and came out as the third single on November 27, 2006. It debuted at number 10 in the UK and number 10 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart in the United States, the band's third top ten there. Triple J listeners voted it number one in the Hottest 100 for 2007, ahead of Silverchair's "Straight Lines" by 13 votes. The studio intro quotes the five-tone phrase from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The guitar sound was inspired by "Telstar", a 1962 hit by the Tornados, whose rhythm guitarist was Matt Bellamy's father, George.
Joseph Kahn directed the video over five days in Romania, London and Red Rock, California. It is a post-apocalyptic spaghetti western, with Russ Bain as the Man With No Name and Richard Brake as Sheriff Baron Klaus Rottingham. The credits end with the copyright year 1981.
Knights of Cydonia runs at 136 BPM, the tempo of techno, trance and big-room dance. In classical terms it sits in allegro territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 1.76 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 441 ms. It is in B minor, Camelot 10A, which shares its notes with D major and mixes cleanly with E minor and F# minor.
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