Forget Team Edward or Team Jacob. Muse might not even be on Team Twilight. According to bassist Chris Wolstenholme, the only reason Muse contributed songs to all three Twilight soundtracks was to expand their fan base in the States, at any cost.
“I’m not sure how cool it is to be on those kind of things but sometimes you’ve just got to get your music out there in different ways,” he admitted to the BBC. “You have to take every opportunity you get [in America] and sometimes you have to sell your soul.”
Wolstenholme also expressed frustration about the back-and-forth between the band and the studio about how the song would be used in the film. “When we were in the studio writing it, one minute they said they wanted to use it in the end credits, then they said they wanted to use it in another scene,” said the bassist, who admitted to the BBC that he’s only watched the first film in the Twilight series. “Then it was another scene, and in the end we were like, ‘Do what you want with it, we don’t care any more.'”
There’s no doubting the level of exposure that a Twilight appearance can garner: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Soundtrack, whose lead single was Muse’s “Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever),” debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, selling 144,000 copies in its first week, while the film itself raked in $175.3 million over its first six days in U.S. theaters.
In the past year, Muse has reached arena-filling status in the States. “It was great to finally take over the full production that we toured with in Europe,” Wolstenholme said. “For a long time America fell by the wayside and nothing was really happening at all and we were having problems with our record company over there.”
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