Recording and composition
"Citizen Erased" was written by singer and guitarist Matt Bellamy, produced by John Leckie and Muse, and has a total runtime of 7 minutes and 21 seconds, making it one of the longest songs in Muse's discography.[1][2] It was primarily recorded at Real World Studios in Box, Wiltshire.[1] Musically, it has been described as progressive rock[3] and space rock.[4] The sixth track on Origin of Symmetry (2001), it has been regarded as the album's centrepiece.[5][6][7] It features a multi-section arrangement that includes "twinkly, emotive arpeggios", as described by Guitar.com.[7]
The song was built around a funk-inspired drum beat developed by Dominic Howard. Chris Wolstenholme began playing to Howard's beat on bass guitar and Bellamy soon applied a chord structure, which resulted in the backbone of "Citizen Erased" being formed.[8] Bellamy used a seven-string Manson guitar on the track,[9] tuned to drop A tuning in standard variation.[10] "Citizen Erased" was the first Muse song to feature a seven-string guitar;[11] this was also the first Manson guitar to be purchased by Bellamy, who would later own a majority stake in the company.[9] Bellamy also used a Z.Vex Fuzz Factory pedal on the track.[11] Because of how long the heavier sections of the initial song lasted, the band decided to "add another song to the end of it";[8] this turned out to be the piano-led coda that closes out the track.[12]
A string section was recorded at Abbey Road Studios for the song's coda, but was not made audible in the song's original mix and instead was filtered out by a droning phaser effect. When Origin of Symmetry was being remixed for its 20th anniversary in 2021, the string section was made audible.[13] Chromatic arpeggios that were quieter in the original mix were also given a cleaner tone and made louder.[11]
Discussing the lyrics of the song, Bellamy described the song as "an expression of what it feels like to be questioned". He was influenced by the frequency of which he was asked by others for his thoughts on human purpose. He went on to say that "I don't really have the answers and I have to respond on the knowledge I have obtained so far, but the problem is that it gets printed, and something else has come along that's made you completely disagree with what you said".[14] Al Horner of NME described the lyrics as being about "forgetting what's gone before and exploring new worlds uninhibited and 'open-minded' – the way Bellamy attests we used to before being corrupted by our leaders."[5] He adds that the lyrics potentially reference George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where individuals are similarly "erased" and deeply affected by totalitarianism.[5]
