“Panic Station” by Muse

"Panic Station" is Muse's The 2nd Law at its most shameless, a funk-rock strut from the band's sixth album in 2012 that later became its fifth single. Matt Bellamy wrote it and sings it, and he lets a curse word slip in, the first time one made it onto a Muse album. The band produced it with Adrian Bushby and Tommaso Colliva, Rich Costey mixed, and Chuck Findley and Steve Madaio blast in on trumpets.

The groove struts, the horns swagger, and the whole thing grins like it knows exactly whose records it's been raiding. Critics noticed: the BBC's Ian Winwood heard both Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in it, though he reckoned it never reached the heights of either. The video was shot in Tokyo's Shibuya district while the band was touring Japan.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.