Muse's muse: £$£$£$£$£

So there I am, with a vitriolic little rant about Teignmouth's finest Muse all ready to go, when I discover that Simon of No Rock 'N' Roll Fun has posted a very helpful quasi-mathematical model for analysing my feelings towards them. Over to you, Simon:

An attempt to explain why bands can ebb and flow in how good they are, how tolerable they are, but that there always comes a point where they just go beyond the pale:

Each band is granted, by God, or Paul Morley, a fixed amount of goodwill when they start out. For some bands, it's a lot (Blur, apparently); for others, it's less (Shed Seven).

But all have a certain degree of goodwill. Let's call it x.

As they slug away making records, they can add to the goodwill (making good records, playing small venues in Northumberland, being amusing in interviews) which will increase x.

Or, they can sap the goodwill (putting out the same single three times because it's been used in a mobile phone advert, cancelling gigs to do ToTP, releasing albums of Malawi musicians because you think it's cool, taking loads of drugs to the point where they believe we actually are interested in the drugs they take). x diminishes.

There comes a point - and, I think this what happened with Blur - that x eventually sinks below zero. And once that's happened, there's no way of getting any more. You can build on goodwill, but once it's gone, it's gone.

"So, how does all this relate to Muse?", I hear you cry. "They're a fine bunch of lads, whose ludicrously excessive baroque 'n' roll bombast is a hugely entertaining antidote to the anti-spectacle introspective dribblings of Coldplay et al. They've sampled someone drumming on skulls, they regularly come onstage to the Tom Waits track 'What's He Building?' and Matt Bellamy is a nutcase who persuaded all his friends, whether romantically attached or not, to sleep with prostitutes - and is thus a very amusing interviewee. Surely Muse's x is a firmly positive value?"

Well, I would have agreed - up until yesterday evening. Which was when I first heard their version of the late-but-still-warm Ms Nina Simone's 'Feeling Good' on a TV advertisement. And not just any old TV advertisement, either. Oh no. It was for Nescafe, the coffee manufactured by that most ethically sound of corporations, Nestle. In the space of a few horrific seconds the value of x, previously healthy and buoyant, went through the floor.

So, to be mathematically precise about it:
Before advertisement: x>0
After advertisement: x<0

You wankers.