Songfacts®:

• Stevie Wonder was one of the inspirations for this '80s inspired tune. Frontman Matt Bellamy told NME: "That's Scary Monsters Bowie meets Primus. Doing a funk track was for us remembering Rush and Primus, the more slap-bass things we liked."
  
  Drummer Dom Howard added: "Those big, spacious, wet, massive drum sounds. It started to conjure up memories of songs we'd listened to or grew up on in the '80s by Prince and Stevie Wonder and we wanted to take It in that direction."
• Muse recorded The 2nd Law in London, then worked on overdubs in Los Angeles with Beck's father, composer David Campbell. Bellamy told Rolling Stone that Campbell "understood that film-music thing we were looking for. And he found a lot of amazing people," including a trumpeter for this track who played on Stevie Wonder's "Superstition."
• Matt Bellamy told NME: "At first I sang 'Panic Station' normally. It wasn't exciting, so I pretended I was Prince."
• Muse received their first-ever Parental Advisory label on The 2nd Law because of the inclusion of the F-word on this song.
• The song's music video sees the Muse trio taking to the streets of Tokyo. It was shot during the Japanese dates of The 2nd Law Tour and was self-directed by the band. The clip caused controversy with its original title shot, which depicted the Rising Sun flag coming up behind the city's skyline. The flag is commonly associated with Japan's militarism during World War II, causing some of their East Asian fans to complain. The band quickly pulled, re-edited and uploaded a new version of the visual.