"Aftermath" is a ballad song by English rock band Muse from their seventh album, Drones. It was released as the fourth single from the album on 11 March 2016.

The song is part of a concept album about "the journey of a human, from their abandonment and loss of hope, to their indoctrination by the system to be a human drone, to their eventual defection from their oppressors".

According to Matt Bellamy, this is one of the two songs that talk about love; in 'Aftermath' the protagonist finds love again. The song is said to be the opposite of Dead Inside.

While producer Mutt Lange had some input on the arrangement of various songs, this is the only song on the album on which the band allowed him to directly influence the songwriting. In a Radio X interview with the band, Bellamy stated that it was "the first time ever we let somebody sort of say things like 'try playing this note or try playing that note' and I'll go like 'yeah, right'. Normally I'd say like 'sorry, that's not what you do, I do that'". Describing "Aftermath" as "one of the few times I allowed a producer to have some say over a song", this approach was the result of Bellamy's respect for Lange's work with ballads, as he himself stated to not "really know the ballad world". In the same interview, Bellamy revealed that the song started off as a bluesy track before the band allowed Lange to take it into a more "progressive, spacey" and balladesque direction. While sounding "like an 80s ballad", the band consider "Aftermath" "the most experimental moment on the album". According to Bellamy, this was also the song on which the producer "showed his true colors" during recording, telling him to “just jam it up, man, just play it heavy, go for it” and after recording further expressing his approval by adding “listen boys, this is the song".

NME described the song as an "after-the-battle singalong in the vein of Rod Stewart's version of the Sutherland Brothers' 'Sailing' or, oh yes, Dire Straits' 'Brothers in Arms'".

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