"Be With You" finds Matt Bellamy in a familiar position: staring into the abyss. He traces a shift from emotional burnout to something like defiant optimism, as he admits his life feels "swallowed up" before resolving to "leap into the fire" and search for a higher power. It's part love song, part cosmic SOS, in the lineage of their 2006 track "
Starlight," where personal longing and grand, universe-sized ideas collide.
Released as the lead single from
The WOW! Signal, the track reflects the album's broader fascination with existential questions and the possibility that someone - or something - might be listening. Bellamy has been pondering such matters for years, from the plea for connection in "
Madness" to the outright divine name-checking of "
Supermassive Black Hole" (which, admittedly, is less about theology and more about gravitational commitment issues).
"Be With You" unfolds in three distinct sections, as if unable to decide on just one dramatic gesture and opting instead for several. It opens with the imposing tones of the grand church organ of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, the second largest church organ in the world, evoking an almost sacred, ecclesiastical atmosphere. From there it shifts into synth-driven territory reminiscent of "
Follow Me," before erupting into a full guitar climax that harks back to the widescreen rock of "
Mercy." In other words, it's a tidy summary of Muse's career, compressed into a single track.
The album - and "Be With You" - was produced by Muse with Dan Lancaster. "Dan's been a friend of ours and actually been playing with us live for about six years or so," Matt Bellamy explained. "He mixed a couple tunes on our last album, and he did a great job. And we've always known he's a great producer, so this is our first time really bringing him in as a producer."
Lancaster also contributed backing vocals to the track.
The music video stars actress Ella Balinska (Resident Evil, The Occupant) and was directed by Nico Paolillo, known for his work with Deafheaven and Bad Omens. It depicts a surreal celestial event in which a red halo clings to the moon, with Balinska encountering strange phenomena; visuals that perfectly mirror the song's themes of cosmic awe and emotional longing.
In a promotional stunt, Muse partnered with Sent Into Space to launch a specially designed tablet 20.5 miles (33km) into the atmosphere to premiere the music video, effectively debuting the song from the edge of space. A second package containing stickers for a limited-edition vinyl release was also launched skyward at the same time.
"Be With You" sits at track 5 on the album, which runs to 10 tracks in total. The album's title references the famous 1977 "Wow!" signal - a mysterious 72-second radio burst detected from the direction of Sagittarius, long considered a candidate for extraterrestrial communication. As
GRIMM Gent noted, the themes of "Be With You" neatly encapsulate the whole album: "cosmic mystery, existential hope and the intriguing possibility of contact with something bigger than ourselves."
The teaser video for "Be With You," filmed inside the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, ended with a flash of the letters and numbers 6EQUJ5, the original notation used to mark the 1977 Wow! signal on the printout, connecting the song directly to the album's central concept.
Muse gave "Be With You" its live debut at London's O2 Academy Brixton on April 3, 2026, as part of a one-off UK concert held to celebrate the announcement of The WOW! Signal.
The sweeping, organ-driven "Be With You" was the song that crystallized the direction of The WOW! Signal. After experimenting with different ideas, it was the first track that convinced Matt Bellamy he had found the album's musical and lyrical identity.
"You can look at it as a love song, or you can look at it as a religious song, almost," Bellamy told The Sun.
Though not religious himself, he chose to record the song on one of the largest church organs in Los Angeles, giving it the grandeur and resonance of a sacred space. The instrument shapes its atmosphere, lending even its quietest moments the sense that something much bigger may be listening.
Bellamy deliberately left the song's central "you" open to interpretation. It could be God, or even an unknown intelligence somewhere beyond Earth.
"I liked the idea that it could be perceived as searching for alien life, or searching for alien intelligence of some kind, or God," he explained.
Rather than choosing between science and spirituality, "Be With You" occupies the intriguing territory where both begin with the same question: Is anybody out there?
