Songfacts®:

• The fifth single from Muse's debut album finds lead singer Matt Bellamy picking up the pieces of his broken heart so he can put it back together for someone new, an "unintended" love interest who shows up while he's nursing his wounds. Bellamy explains how the love song ended up on the album: "There are a few unintended love songs as well. The song I wrote about the girl was written in the studio after a phone conversation with her. We called it 'Unintended' because it came out of nowhere, and I didn't mean it to happen, all of these feelings for this girl." >>>

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• While most Muse tracks originate with Matt Bellamy experimenting musically, "Unintended" was a rare case where the lyrics came first.
• The song was originally written in 1997 or 1998, composed on keyboard, which made it difficult to perform live because the band didn't have a dedicated keys player. By December 1998, however, the track had been rearranged for acoustic guitar, giving it the haunting, fingerpicked quality fans would come to know from the Showbiz album version.
• "Unintended" found a regular place in Muse's live sets during their 2000 tour, and over the years it has appeared in a variety of arrangements, including both piano and acoustic renditions. However, after 2013, the song more or less disappeared from the band's live performances. It returned in June 2025 when it made a surprise return during Muse's set at the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands, marking its first live appearance in over a decade.