Will of the People Festivals Tour
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A tour, spread out throughout the entire second half of 2022, and the beginning of 2023, during which Muse played festivals in both Europe, and the United States. The Will of the People Festivals Tour took place between June 2022 and January 2023. This was the first tour of the Will of the People era, and first tour in three years, since the pandemic of 2020.
Information
The tour began one month after the WOTP promo gigs, and first gigs since 2019 alltogether, in Exeter's Cavern Club and London's Apollo gigs, on June 4th, 2022, with a performance at Rock am Ring in Germany. As mentioned above, this was the first major tour, supporting the album, Will of the People. The tour included Muse's debut performances at Nova Rock, Aftershock and Audacy Beach festivals, aswell as performances at the Isle of Wight, Eurockéennes and Rock in Rio Lisbon festivals, amongst others. The tour also included a special, more intimate invite-only gig, at the James B. Beam Distillery in Kentucky, when Muse played a gig as part of Jim Beam Welcome Sessions.
Will of the People and Kill or Be Killed made their live debuts on the first leg of the tour, with Compliance and Won't Stand Down being played on the couple gigs before the tour. You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween made its debut on the second leg of the tour, in September. Nishe was brought back after 11 years, played before Madness, and also played in full for the first time since 2000. A Bellamy solo song, Behold, The Glove, returned, after last being present during the Simulation Theory World Tour in 2019, when it was played from tape as a short intro piece (then known as STT Interstitial 2). On this tour, the song was played in full, with the entire band.
The day before the first gig, on June 3rd, 2022, the entire tour's setlist template was leaked on Twitter.
Production
The show was, in some aspects, similar to the afforementioned previous tour. Similar to Murph the Robot, the tour featured its counterpart, a large inflatable "masked hacker" figure, nicknamed "Will the Hacker", which was set up on-stage behind the band, and was present throughout most of the show (excluding the fist few songs). It was revealed during Won't Stand Down. The main difference between Will the Hacker and Murph is that the hacker was a lot bigger and bulkier. It's made up of three separate parts: Two shoulders, sitting on each side of the head, which was attached to trussing, rotating left to right slightly. Behind the hacker were two thin walls of LED light strips, also attached to top trussing. Lights were used to illuminate the inflatable figure from different angles throughout the show.
Also similar to the Simulation Theory Tour was the use of The Power Glove. The difference, however, is, that, the new glove acted as an instrument, with a built-in smartphone, connected to the PA system, using a synthesizer app called "NOISE". Matt played Behold, The Glove and the synth intro of Uprising on the glove. While doing so, Bellamy wore an illuminating LED leather jacket, similar to the jacket worn during the previous tour.
Keeping with the heavier style of the new songs, the gigs relied on heavy use of pyro, specifically, fire. The show opened with a large burning "WOTP" monogram logo, placed behind the band, while they play the song Will of the People. The fire can be re-ignited quickly at any given time, with the ability to lit up each letter separately. Fire machines are used throughout the rest of the show, during Won't Stand Down, Madness, Thought Contagion, Uprising, Kill or Be Killed and (later on during the tour) Knights of Cydonia.
Three video interstitials, named "Chant", "Parkour" and "Driving" were played during the show. These included elements from Will of the People's music video. The "Chant" one was played before Will of the People, and showed the video of the stone heads being torn down, seen during the last part of the music video, and also in the album trailer, posted on Muse's YouTube channel. The "Parkour" one showed the rioter running and jumping over buildings, as seen during the music video's first part, and is played before Time Is Running Out. The "Driving" interstitial showed the vehicles from the music video being driven through the desert, and was played before Plug In Baby.
With Mercy being dropped from the setlists, Compliance took over as the song during which streamers are released.
On some dates, due to the logistics, some elements of the production weren't present on all gigs, or were swapped. This notably happened for the Lisbon gig at Rock in Rio, when the main production was headed to London, so the band were forced to use a minimal stage setup, which included replacing the figure of Will the Hacker with Murph the Robot, ditching the "WOTP" logo at the start, and changing the band's wardrobe. The same (or similar) minimal stage set-up was also present during the Telekom Street Gigs show in Cologne, Audacy Beach Festival in Fort Lauderdale and the iHeartRadio ALTer EGO in Los Angeles, while the burning logo itself didn't appear in Florence, at Firenze Rocks.
Average Setlist
- Will of the People (extended intro)
- Interlude + Hysteria
- [Drill Sergeant] (robot voice) + Psycho
- Pressure
- Won't Stand Down
- Map of the Problematique / Stockholm Syndrome / Citizen Erased
- The Gallery
- Compliance (w/ guitar)
- Thought Contagion
- Time Is Running Out
- Nishe
- Madness
- Supermassive Black Hole
- Plug In Baby (extended outro)
- Behold, The Glove (Matthew Bellamy song)
- Uprising (extended outro)
- Prelude + Starlight
Encore
Notes
- Map of the Problematique and Stockholm Syndrome share their outro riffs, being Duality, Calm Like a Bomb and the Unknown one, although they shuffle through them gig by gig.
- Nishe was initially only played as a short 1-minuite snippet, but it was later extended to almost 2 minutes after the third show.
Exceptions
- Citizen Erased was played at the Rock am Ring gig as an extra song after Madness while Map of the Problematique was played in the rotation slot.
- For the first 4 shows of the tour, Thought Contagion was played between Supermassive Black Hole and Plug in Baby.
- At the Isle of Wight Festival, Won't Stand Down was played after the rotation slot while Citizen Erased was played in said slot.
- You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween got its debut at Xacobeo Festival. It was played after Thought Contagion and replaced the MOTP/Stockholm Syndrome/Citizen Erased slot and was played there through September.
- Tributing Queen Elizabeth II after her passing, "God Save the Queen" was played briefly at Xacobeo Festival, before Interlude.
- Telekom Street Gigs, James B. Beam Distillery had notably shorter setlists, with Thought Contagion, Time Is Running Out, Nishe and Madness all being dropped with no replacement and some of the remaining songs were shuffled around. The only setlist difference between the two (other than the order of the songs) is that Behold, The Glove was played at the former while Minimum was played at the latter. The 2023 iHeartRadio gig at Los Angeles+s The Kia Forum had the shortest setlist of all shows, with just nine songs, being Will of the People, Hysteria, Won't Stand Down, Madness, Compliance, Supermassive Black Hole, Behold The Glove, Uprising and Starlight, which was the closer.
- Aftershock Festival had a notably heavier setlist, with Stockholm Syndrome replacing Pressure, We Are Fucking Fucked replacing the summer rotation slot, New Born replacing Compliance, You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween replacing Thought Contagion, Minimum replacing Nishe and Madness being dropped with no replacement.
Stats
Gigs
| Date | Venue | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 2023-01-14 | The Kia Forum (iHeartRadio ALTer EGO) | Los Angeles, CA, USA |
| 2022-12-03 | Fort Lauderdale Beach (Audacy Beach Festival) | Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA |
| 2022-10-09 | Discovery Park (Aftershock Festival) | Sacramento, CA, USA |
| 2022-10-08 | James B. Beam Distillery (Jim Beam Welcome Sessions) | Sacramento, CA, USA |
| 2022-09-13 | Mediapark (Telekom Street Gigs at Digital X) | Cologne, Germany |
| 2022-09-10 | Sacaba Beach (Andalucía Big Festival by Mad Cool) | Málaga, Spain |
| 2022-09-08 | Estadio de Balaídos (Xacobeo Festival) | Vigo, Spain |
| 2022-07-10 | Chateau d'Aubiry (Les Déferlantes Festival) | Céret, France |
| 2022-07-08 | Espacio Mad Cool (Mad Cool Festival) | Madrid, Spain |
| 2022-07-06 | Chateau de Beauregard (Festival Beauregard) | Cellettes, France |
| 2022-07-03 | Lac de Malsaucy (Les Eurockéennes de Belfort) | Malsaucy, France |
| 2022-07-02 | Festivalgeländ (OpenAir St. Gallen) | St. Gallen, Switzerland |
| 2022-06-29 | OAKA (Ejekt Festival) | Athens, Greece |
| 2022-06-26 | Antiguo Aquapark (Mallorca Live Festival) | Calvià, Spain |
| 2022-06-23 | Tusindårsskoven (Tinderbox Festival) | Odense, Denmark |
| 2022-06-21 | Löver Camping (VOLT Festival) | Sopron, Hungary |
| 2022-06-19 | Seaclose Park (Isle of Wight Festival) | Newport, UK |
| 2022-06-18 | Bela Vista Park (Rock in Rio) | Lisbon, Portugal |
| 2022-06-17 | Visarno Arena (Firenze Rocks) | Florence, Italy |
| 2022-06-11 | Flughafen Tempelhof (Tempelhof Sounds) | Berlin, Germany |
| 2022-06-09 | Pannonia Fields II (Nova Rock Festival) | Nickelsdorf, Austria |
| 2022-06-05 | Zeppelinfeld (Rock im Park) | Nuremberg, Germany |
| 2022-06-04 | Nürburgring (Rock am Ring) | Nürburg, Germany |
Warm up gigs
A handful of gigs which took place before the festivals tour, including two charity gigs at London's Eventim Apollo and an intimate gig in Exeter's Cavern Club. These gigs weren't officially part of any tours.
| Date | Venue | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-05-10 | Eventim Apollo (The Big Issue Charity Gig) | London, UK |
| 2022-05-09 | Eventim Apollo (War Child & Médecins Sans Frontières Charity Gig) | London, UK |
| 2022-04-07 | Cavern Club (Secret Promo Gig) | Exeter, UK |