Everyone knows a music nostalgia freak.

They’re convinced the music of today is inferior to the music of the past. The problem exists in the fact that every generation in the music listening history of humanity—with the exception of the birth of music.

The nostalgia freaks are wrong: every last one of them. Aside from the psychological arguments about nostalgia-factors relating to building up memories of the past to be better than they actually are, people are just more likely to remember the good music of an era and forget that the majority of the music of the era was of poor quality—see the 90s.

Through the clutter of “flavor-of-the-week artists” and “teen-tunes,” today’s music industry possesses a large amount of talented artists—most of which don’t get a lot of exposure in the current market.

However, everyone seems to forget about Muse when they make the generalization that the top-selling music of the 2000s lacks any substance.

Muse’s front man, Matt Bellamy, is a virtuoso on both the guitar and piano. The band writes musically deep and complex songs that manage to frequently dominate the music charts in the United States and Europe. Additionally, Muse doesn’t just produce one or two chart-toppers per album, outside of the states, Muse’s albums manage to have four to six songs chart.

In the states, Muse’s last two albums “Black Holes and Revelations” and “Absolution” each featured three charting singles. The band would probably be even bigger in the states if the phenomenal “Origin of Symmetry” got released in 2001—when it came out in the UK—instead of in 2005 after the success of “Absolution.” However, this is not to knock the American-taste in music. Rumor has it “Origin of Symmetry” was not released stateside because the band’s label felt the American audience wouldn’t take to Bellamy’s falsetto vocals.

Oops.

According to RIAA, the new-age group Mannheim Steamroller sold over 28 million albums since 1975; the group never stood out as a definitive artist in any decade.

In the end, the first decade of the 2000s will not go down in the history books as the decade of Nickelback and Three Doors Down, but as a decade where bands like Muse just didn’t get the full recognition they deserved.