"Butterflies and Hurricanes" is a song by English rock band Muse. It was released as the sixth and final single from their third studio album, Absolution (2003), on 20 September 2004. Unlike Absolution, the single was released through Atlantic Records.
The song was one of two songs recorded with a studio orchestra during the initial stages of production. It 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.[2]
Background and composition
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:
"I found myself playing this paradiddle, that goes [imitates paradiddle] like that over and over again. And I started playing that on just two notes, constantly playing it, over and over again until I got to a point where extra notes were sort of finding their way in there, do you know what I mean? And it ended up building up to the point where I was playing five-note chords with each hand and playing these massive chords on the piano and it was sounding really fucking heavy, do you know what I mean? And a chord structure started to come out of that, and I was thinking, "This could be something"".
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".
Recording
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 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.
Live performances
The song was reworked with a more prominent electric guitar sound during the Absolution tour, including some extended guitar solos before the piano interlude (and a bass fill to segue Matt Bellamy's transition from guitar to the piano). This version was also performed live during the Black Holes and Revelations tour, and can be heard in the Wembley Stadium concerts. The song was played at most shows from 2003 to 2008, and made occasional appearances during The Resistance Tour, The 2nd Law Tour, and the Drones World Tour. The song was last performed on the 27th September 2023, during the Will of the People tour in Dublin, for the first time since 2017.
Music video
The music comprises stock footage of the band playing "Butterflies and Hurricanes" at different venues during their Absolution tour with some effects added, and images of the Colosseum in Rome serving as the main backdrop.
