Muse Reveal Origin of Queen-Inspired 'United States of Eurasia'

It's no secret the members of Muse are fans of fellow extravagant rock legends Queen. Though they've flirted with Queen-esque songs in the past, for the epic 'United States of Eurasia' off current album 'The Resistance,' Muse finally decided to take the homage and run with it into full-fledged pastiche.

But though the band doesn't deny tipping their musical hats to Freddie Mercury and his bandmates, drummer Dominic Howard tells Spinner that the whole thing "just sort of happened."

"I'm a big Queen fan and certainly in '...Eurasia' there's that one chord with the line, 'there could be only one,' that sounds Queen-influenced, but that wasn't overtly done," Howard recalls. "When you build up all those vocal layers it just happens that way."

In fact, while some critics have accused the band of lacking their heroes' sense of humour, according to Howard it was that absurd hilarity which gave the band the confidence to run with the song.

"We were working on the arrangements in the studio and when we got to that part, we all just fell on the floor laughing," the drummer admits with a chuckle. "It sounded very, very funny to us. It definitely sounded very, er, familiar in some kind of way, but we just laughed so much we just kind of went with it.""Our songs have lots of depth and feel very epic; it's not something that we're overtly trying to do, be over the top. I mean of course I like simplicity and minimalism as well, but something like 'Eurasia' makes you want to pump your first in the air and scream out the line.That's what we're going for, a lot of emotion."