Butterflies and Hurricanes
| "Butterflies and Hurricanes" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The "Butterflies and Hurricanes" CD cover.
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| Single by Muse | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| from the album Absolution | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Released | 20 September 2004 (UK) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Recorded | 2003 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Length | 5:01 (Album version) 4:48 (Single version) 4:20 (Radio edit) |
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| Label | Mushroom ATUK003CD (UK) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Butterflies and Hurricanes" is a song by English alternative rock band Muse from their third studio album, Absolution, and was the last single released from the album. It was one of two songs recorded with a studio orchestra during the initial stages of production. The song is also notable for its Rachmaninoff-esque piano interlude.
The title and theme were mainly inspired by the butterfly effect of chaos theory. The theory describes how even the smallest of changes in present conditions, like the flapping of a butterfly's wings, can cause a chain reaction and have a significant effect in the future, like a hurricane.
The song was also dedicated to Dominic Howard's father, who died shortly after the band's performance at the Glastonbury Festival.
Some parts of the song have been around at least as early as 1999. Matt Bellamy had suggested a piece featuring the band and an orchestra playing over a "mechanical paradiddle" to Dom Howard, the band's drummer. According to Bellamy the song really took shape when he spent a few hours fiddling around on a Steinway piano he found at a hotel he was staying in:
Matthew Bellamy also declared about the song: "It's about hope, about trying to find the strength to get through any given situation. I was trying to find a classical type of piano style that would be heavy and work with bass and drums. It had that sort of mechanical paradiddle thing all the way through, and then it breaks down into this kind of romantic, flowing weird bit in the middle".
There are several versions of "Butterflies and Hurricanes". For the original studio recording, the song's introduction, verse and choruses were harmonically driven by piano and keyboards. The single version contains both guitar and keyboard, but loses the guitar solo, and the interlude is slightly shorter, reducing the song from 5:01 to 4:48. The vinyl single includes a full-length version with guitars in the mix. Finally, the radio edit of the single goes further by omitting the entire piano interlude, bringing the song down to 4:10.
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Wikipedia