Muse - Butterflies and Hurricanes (Video)

What this video is

Released on 20 September 2004 as the sixth and final single from Muse's landmark third album Absolution, 'Butterflies and Hurricanes' arrived at a moment when British alternative rock bands were scaling from club venues to arena and festival headliners. The song's thematic grounding in chaos theory — specifically the butterfly effect, whereby microscopic initial conditions cascade into macro-scale phenomena — gave…

Why it matters

The video is a significant artefact of mid-2000s British art-rock and progressive alternative rock visual culture, demonstrating how acts operating at the junction of rock spectacle and orchestral ambition used live performance documentation augmented by early CGI to construct mythology around…

The director

Tim Qualtrough is a British director and editor whose career spans music video direction and live concert film production. He directed multiple Muse videos including Stockholm Syndrome (2004) and Panic Station (2013), and served as editor on major live…