Muse Wows the Crowd at Spain’s Mallorca Live Festival: Concert Review

Charlie Amter

While Ibiza has long been a music mecca for international tourists keen on catching big-name DJs at a club, Spain’s other, larger, Balearic island, Mallorca, is hoping to become a live music magnet for fans of rock music via its growing summer festival, Mallorca Live.

Held this past weekend in the island’s British-holidaymaker-friendly resort town Magaluf, Mallorca Live stepped up its game in 2022, with three days of rock, Latin, rap, pop and electronic acts ranging from Spanish rapper/singer C. Tangana on Friday night to Sunday night headliners Muse, who closed out the event in a rousing set that wowed the largely local audience, though this year saw the most amount of international guests traveling to Mallorca Live than in years past, organizers say. (Mallorca Live is now in its fifth year as an annual event, with the fest taking the past two years off due to coronavirus.)

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While Spain has larger music events, such as Madrid’s Mad Cool Festival, taking place next month, Mallorca Live offered guests a similar experience with expertly executed sound and logistics, and a stage large enough to accommodate bands as big as Muse, which tore through its set in epic fashion Sunday night to a large crowd (between 25,000 and 30,000 attended each night of Mallorca Live, organizers claim).

Opening with their new glam-rock inspired “Will of the People,” Muse (yes, that’s singer-guitarist Matt Bellamy pictured above wearing a mask) kept its foot on the proverbial accelerator Sunday night and tore through beloved catalog hits such as “Psycho,” “Madness,” “Pressure” and more. The trio, which just put tickets on sale last week for a small North America trek this October, was as tight as fans have come to expect, as the band continues to build anticipation for its forthcoming “Will of the People” album, which is set to be released on August 26 via Warner Records.

Muse closed out its hour-or-so-long set with an encore comprising of new track “Kill or Be Killed,” which the band debuted earlier this month at Germany’s Rock am Ring festival, followed by a raucous rendering of “Knights of Cydonia.”

Between Mallorca Live and this fall’s Andalucía Big Festival, Mallorca may well soon be known as a live music destination to rival Ibiza’s magnetic draw for EDM fans from all over the world, even America (United Airlines just launched a direct flight to Palma de Mallorca earlier this month, a thrice-weekly route from Newark). It’s surely several steps above German schlager stars playing for pensioners, which might have been Mallorca’s main draw for international music fans in decades past.

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