Songfacts®:

• "Feeling Good" was the first cover song Muse recorded - it was written for a 1965 Broadway musical called The Roar Of The Greasepaint - The Smell Of The Crowd and popularized by Nina Simone, who released her version that year. Muse started performing the song live in 1999 and released it on their Origin Of Symmetry album in 2001. It quickly became a fan favorite and was a hit in their native UK when it was released as a double-A-side single along with "Hyper Music."
• It was Muse lead singer Matt Bellamy's idea to cover the song. We have his former flame, who apparently has excellent musical taste, to thank for introducing it to him. "My girlfriend at the time, her favorite artist was Nina Simone," he said on Radio X. "She'd listen to her all the time. I kept hearing that song 'Feeling Good,' and I thought that with a distorted bass line, that could be really cool."
• "Feeling Good" is a song about optimism and renewal, quite a departure from the downright dystopian songs Muse is known for, like "Knights Of Cydonia" and "Exogenesis Symphony."
  
  "I just want people to know that underlying what I do is something positive, and that I'm not here to kill myself or to destroy the situation we live in," Matt Bellamy explained on Rock Sound.
• In 2003, Muse were surprised to learn that their cover of "Feeling Good" was being used in a UK TV commercial for Nestlé, who had not secured permission. The band sued, and Nestlé replaced their version with a soundalike recorded by a singer named Eon John. The settlement money, reported at £500,000, Muse donated to the charity Oxfam.
• On April 3, 2001, before a live show in Madrid, Muse stopped by Radio 3 to perform a few songs. During "Feeling Good," Matt Bellamy grabbed the megaphone he used to distort his vocals, and started spewing vulgarity live on the air. It was reported that something about the production upset him, but Bellamy later claimed he did it because he forgot the words.