Muse's songwriting is unfocused and clever enough to enable several interpretations.
The story the lyrics have been inspired by is quite renowned : like it has been previously said, the story is about humanity sending astronauts into space to find a new planet to live and spread human race, because Earth is doomed. To quote a previous user "Part 3 is when the astronauts realize that it is just one big cycle, and recognize that unless humanity can change it will happen all over again".
However, the song can be understood as an evocation of the overall theme of being given a second chance. This meaning can be carried by the lyrics but also by the crescendo-like construction of the song.
It refers to an event resulting in protagonists considering an opportunity, offered but not yet seized, of taking a brand new start into something, after a great trauma or crisis.
For example, it works very well if you apply it to a romance :
Two lovers went through a big emotional crisis (one cheating on the other, betraying him/her, neglecting him/her…) leading to a split. Once the crisis is over, they decide to wipe away the troubles and take a new start, this time avoiding their previous mistakes. Considering how serious their quarrel was, this solution is a desperate attempt to reconcile with each other and try to go on : "It's our last chance […]". Both lovers share guiltiness, they both have wrongs to apologize for, and to do it is the only path leading to a new peace : "[…] to forgive ourselves".
Of course this interpretation works with any kind of relationship, although the extremity which the characters involved seem to have been led to, plus the urge, tense, desperate and romantic feeling carried by the instrumentation based on strings, suggest a very close relationship, so my first thought was a love story.
The official music video "Furiko" ("Pendulum") by Takefumi "Tekken" Kurashina also helps feeding this interpretation, but in a different way.
The song is full of hope and promises for the future, and yet it keeps a slight ambiguity that might lead to consider the meaning desperate and hopeless. "Just let us start it over again" and "Why can't we start it over again" suggests that the protagonist aren't, in some way, allowed to try and get their second chance, that they aren't in the capability of being redeemed, and they are begging for it, suffering of being deprived of that chance.
These sentences fit perfectly the music video "Pendulum" : a man (or more likely his soul/spirit) tries desperately to stop the pendulum representing the course of Time, in order to get the chance/the time to repair its faults against his wife. The good and innocent moments the couple spent together are also displayed in the background during this sequence, echoing with the "fight against time" occurring, in a way that suggests that the man would like to go back in time, to get the chance to make the good choices and treat his wife properly.
In this sadder vision, the song becomes a reflection on the theme of mankind struggling against its mortal condition : we are running short of time to do everything right the way we'd like it to be done. It echoes to the general need for us to be forgiven, which means : to be loved in spite of our flaws and failures.
However, in the end, the pace of the song slow down, and the peaceful piano notes of the beginning come back. Of course it suggests a cycling story, like "the story will repeat itself", and with it, all the wrongs. But the cooling down feeling also suggests some kind of happy end, like the weather calming down after a storm. Ending that way, the song may give a feeling of a found back peace, like if the redemption (after all, it's the subtitle of the song) as been successfully completed. So the song let you free to hope and choose what end you want to give it.
Muse's songwriting is unfocused and clever enough to enable several interpretations.
The story the lyrics have been inspired by is quite renowned : like it has been previously said, the story is about humanity sending astronauts into space to find a new planet to live and spread human race, because Earth is doomed. To quote a previous user "Part 3 is when the astronauts realize that it is just one big cycle, and recognize that unless humanity can change it will happen all over again".
However, the song can be understood as an evocation of the overall theme of being given a second chance. This meaning can be carried by the lyrics but also by the crescendo-like construction of the song.
It refers to an event resulting in protagonists considering an opportunity, offered but not yet seized, of taking a brand new start into something, after a great trauma or crisis.
For example, it works very well if you apply it to a romance :
Two lovers went through a big emotional crisis (one cheating on the other, betraying him/her, neglecting him/her…) leading to a split. Once the crisis is over, they decide to wipe away the troubles and take a new start, this time avoiding their previous mistakes. Considering how serious their quarrel was, this solution is a desperate attempt to reconcile with each other and try to go on : "It's our last chance […]". Both lovers share guiltiness, they both have wrongs to apologize for, and to do it is the only path leading to a new peace : "[…] to forgive ourselves". Of course this interpretation works with any kind of relationship, although the extremity which the characters involved seem to have been led to, plus the urge, tense, desperate and romantic feeling carried by the instrumentation based on strings, suggest a very close relationship, so my first thought was a love story.
The official music video "Furiko" ("Pendulum") by Takefumi "Tekken" Kurashina also helps feeding this interpretation, but in a different way.
The song is full of hope and promises for the future, and yet it keeps a slight ambiguity that might lead to consider the meaning desperate and hopeless. "Just let us start it over again" and "Why can't we start it over again" suggests that the protagonist aren't, in some way, allowed to try and get their second chance, that they aren't in the capability of being redeemed, and they are begging for it, suffering of being deprived of that chance.
These sentences fit perfectly the music video "Pendulum" : a man (or more likely his soul/spirit) tries desperately to stop the pendulum representing the course of Time, in order to get the chance/the time to repair its faults against his wife. The good and innocent moments the couple spent together are also displayed in the background during this sequence, echoing with the "fight against time" occurring, in a way that suggests that the man would like to go back in time, to get the chance to make the good choices and treat his wife properly.
In this sadder vision, the song becomes a reflection on the theme of mankind struggling against its mortal condition : we are running short of time to do everything right the way we'd like it to be done. It echoes to the general need for us to be forgiven, which means : to be loved in spite of our flaws and failures.
However, in the end, the pace of the song slow down, and the peaceful piano notes of the beginning come back. Of course it suggests a cycling story, like "the story will repeat itself", and with it, all the wrongs. But the cooling down feeling also suggests some kind of happy end, like the weather calming down after a storm. Ending that way, the song may give a feeling of a found back peace, like if the redemption (after all, it's the subtitle of the song) as been successfully completed. So the song let you free to hope and choose what end you want to give it.