Muse Asks Glenn Beck To Retract His Enjoyment Of Their Music? (UPDATE)

In case you missed it: when Glenn Beck praised Muse, a neo-prog rock band from England, on his radio show, the band asked him to retract his endorsement within less than five minutes. Ouch. Or did they?

At the start of the segment, Beck praises Muse as “libertarians from England” (?), But at 4:25, here’s what he has to say:

“Just got an email from representation of Muse: they would like me to retract my endorsement of their talent. My apologies to Muse for saying that I like them. I didn’t mean to destroy all their credibility and all their coolness. Let me just set the record straight: Muse: I hate them. It’s an awful album, and you should never go out and buy it.”

To Beck’s credit, he wasn’t just trying to be ‘with it’ on the spot: he also praised Muse on his radio show on August 7th.

One interesting footnote to the episode: this all happened on Beck’s show on September 16th. It was picked up by Media Matters and more or less ignored in other quarters, but it’s just recently begun to ‘go viral,’ as the youngsters say. Stereogum, telegraph.co.uk, MTV, and now, even Mediaite have recently jumped on the bandwagon. The Internet gives otherwise obscure little stories of this variety much longer legs than they might otherwise have, and gives them the chance to resurface at unexpected times. Particularly if they involve Glenn Beck.

Update: Chalk one up for Glenn Beck? Christopher Balfe, the president and COO of Mercury Radio Arts, tells Mediaite: “After raving about Muse for 4 minutes, Glenn made a joke about their representatives emailing him to stop. While it is entirely possible that Muse does not like having Glenn as a fan, he was making a joke and their representatives never reached out to him.”

Here’s Media Matters‘ clip of the radio segment:

And here’s the Muse song in question, “Uprising”: (just audio, no video)