taken minutes before JDB retired to the lounge with a cigar and a cognac
Five years ago, serious illness and a COVID-indulged lighter workload allowed me time to complete perhaps this blog’s central achievement when I named and shamed the 100 Greatest Manic Street Preachers songs ever. Well five years is a long time in the heated Manics Discourse that is constantly firing back in forth in my brain*, and the list is already looking dangerously out of date. The petard that I have chosen to hoist myself upon is doing the entire list again. Kinda…
I say “Kinda” because the list won’t be radically different. There are nineteen new entries, occasionally representing the two Manics albums released since the last run down (‘The Ultra Vivid Lament‘ did technically come out before the list was finished, though there was only time to include the album’s lead single Orwellian at #93), and also older tracks that I’ve rediscovered. A lot of the written entries will be the same as they were in 2021 – because, come on now, I’m not going to mess too much with perfection – though there will be a handful of edits, often based on information revealed in Keith Cameron’s new bible ‘168 Songs of Hatred and Failure‘, released in 2025. Some big songs miss out this time: some moxey of me to quote The Masses Against the Classes in the opening line then not even include the silly yet lovable thrash-along that finished #66 last time. With space on the list at a premium, I’ve also decided not to include covers in the 2026 edition, so farewell Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel (#68) and – tragically – Umbrella (#37).
““I am nothing, but I must be everything”
(*the doctors actually consider it a serious enough mental issue that I need to wear tags and report to the police every Wednesday. Or maybe that’s because of all those articles about Palestine. Or the dick pics I sent to that primary school message board. Difficult to pinpoint)
Crucially, for the first time, every Manics album will be represented. Yes, even that one. At different points during the 2021 countdown and the statistical breakdown, I described 2010’s ‘Postcards From a Young Man‘ as an “audio abortion”; “an embarrassingly overproduced, butter upon bacon mess”; “an artistic and logistical disaster”; “artistic cancer”; a “genocide of inventiveness”; and “worse than Hitler”, and suggested that upon releasing the album the band “shit the bed so hard that they suffered a pelvic organ prolapse”. I, of course, stand proudly by all of those statements and have just relished the opportunity to repeat them. However, although the album as a whole is still an abomination which should never be spoken of… a couple of songs made it in this time… It’s not even the album with the least tracks, I don’t know what to believe anymore.
So you’ll read about songs from ‘GT’ (‘Generation Terrorists’), ‘GATS’ (‘Gold Against the Soul’), ‘THB’ (‘The Holy Bible’), ‘EMG’ (‘Everything Must Go’), ‘TIMTTMY’ (‘This is My Truth Tell Me Yours’), ‘KYE’ (‘Know Your Enemy’), ‘LB’ (‘Lifeblood’), ‘SATT’ (‘Send Away the Tigers’), ‘JFPL’ (‘Journal for Plague Lovers’), ‘PFAYM’ (‘Postcards From a Young Man’); ‘RTF’ (‘Rewind the Film’), ‘RIF’ (‘Resistance is Futile’), ‘TUVL’ (‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’), ‘CT’ (‘Critical Thinking’) and ‘Futurology’. Yeah, I always spell that last one out in full. Calling it ‘F’ just seems naff. Especially for an album I’d give an ‘A’ to ammi right lads?!?!?! We have a lot of fun here.
L-R: Nicky, JDB, Sean, Richey (lying down)
Similarly, I’ll often be referring to the band members far too casually as ‘Sean’ (Moore, drummer), ‘Richey’ (Edwards/James, ex lyricist), ‘JDB’ (James Dean Bradfield, singer and guitarist) and ‘Nicky’ (Wire, bass player and lyricist). Or sometimes ‘Wire’. I really never settle on what I’m calling Nicky Wire, which I like to think reflects my conflicted opinions on the guy in the big old twenty-two-six.
And the Bethlehem radio is crystal clear and beautiful
When I last published this list five years ago, 2004’s cold and melancholy ‘Lifeblood’ was still pretty much universally derided as the band’s nadir. Every ‘Lifeblood’ track that made the top 100 moved me to point out “See? See?? It’s not that bad at all!
“1985! 1985!! Look, 1985!!”
Since then there’s been a big change in its general perceived quality, with people now open to the album’s ambitious composure and confident sparseness. By the time of its 2024 reissue, it felt like there had been a complete turnaround in the critical consensus, with people now agreeing that it was an interesting and ambitious commercial failure, rather than how it was viewed for much of the previous 20 years (just a failure). In fact, even the fact it received a twentieth anniversary reissue is proof how… No, who am I kidding? These fat fucks will release special editions of farts they did in the bath because they know that pathetic marks like me will eat that shit up.
However, I do now worry that… mate, c’mon… have we not swung a little too far the other way? I have always argued that ‘LB’ is in no way a terrible album, and contains some of the band’s legitimate artistic high points (see below list), but it’s not that good! Much of it is only ‘ambitious’ in the sense that it was a risk for the Manics to attempt to introduce their core fanbase to Yacht Rock and 80’s commercial sheen. I have nothing but praise for the high points, but I have had bouts of dysentery more artistically rewarding than mid tempo slop like Emily and Cardiff Afterlife. I have seen people list ‘Lifeblood’ as the band’s greatest ever album, which is just certifiably insane. We live in an age of extremities though, where a take is only worthwhile if it announces something in the superlative. So if ‘LB’ isn’t the band’s worst album (which it absolutely is not) then it has to be their absolute best (which – BY GOD! – it is absolutely not!!). And, let’s not forget the context here – back in 2004, you could absolutely consider ‘Lifeblood’ the worse of their career. We weren’t to know what depths they’d fall to in the future!
The ‘Lifeblood’ era was a surprisingly fertile period for great b-sides though. Surprising because there was only two singles released from the album before both the band and their record label drove the album out to the docks, put a bullet in the back of its head, dumped the body in the water and all took a solemn oath to never speak again about what the whole affair. And surprising because the album itself didn’t necessarily suggest they were overflowing with ideas.
Shit, by the end of this post I’m going to end up convincing myself that ‘LB is actually the worst album ever. Well it’s not the best, so what else is it going to be?!
One of the best of the period is the sweeping and chilling All Alone Here, which hangs on a gorgeous looping acoustic guitar line and an incredible JDB vocal performance. The lyrics are meh upon meh, but Nicky’s central breezy bass is such a central tenet of the song’s quality that I’m going to forgive him. For now. For now.
Can’t something go right Little things change people’s lives Hostile words won’t fill your eyes Same noise left to destroy
In 2004 though, that ‘LB’ album was an horrendously laid egg. Ignored by the wider public, as the band would have been getting used to at that point, but more importantly rejected by the band’s ‘Legacy Fans’ to such an extent that even they didn’t buy it, and it ended up selling roughly eight copies. In retrospect, 2007’s ‘Send Away the Tigers’ is often looked back upon today as a rather undercooked and basic attempt to pander to their core fanbase after ‘Lifeblood’ was initially deemed a failure both commercially and amongst the ‘Legacy Fans’.
But when you look at it with a more critical eye… No, you’re all right, that’s exactly what it is. But, fuck all y’all, sometimes it feels great to be pandered to! ‘SATT’ isn’t wall to wall bangers, but its highlights are among the band’s greatest and most freaking fun hair-metal-cock-rock nonsense paired with nakedly political lyrics since their debut album. The opening title track introduces the album perfectly, demonstrating the band’s ability to marry challenging and often uncomfortable lyrics (in this case, how drug use is so often used to battle depression) with a killer tune that’s still going to ensure crowds of fans will be singing these lyrics back at them across the country. It might be named after comedian Tony Hancock’s phrase for when he tried to drink away his massive depression, and quotes his suicide note (“Things have gone wrong too many times”) in the third line, but holy shit listen to that riff! And the way the chorus just explodes into view! Nomnomnomnomnom!!
With Ashley Williams We can win any fight Chrissy Coleman, Gunter, Chester Hennessey, Allen, King and Collins Davis, Ledley, Taylor, Richards, Hal Robson Kanu
Some people assumed this was some sort of joke when it made the lowest reaches of the list five years ago. Well, guess what? It’s one place higher this time, motherfuckers!! This cunt will be number one when I’ve updated the list 99 times in the year 2521. What’s that? You’ll be dead by then? Well, sucks to be you, I guess, what do you want me to do about it? 🤷♀️That Christmas song that made #100 last time though? Erm, yeah, that hasn’t made it. I was kinda making some sort of point in 2021 that let’s just say I no longer wish to make. Seriously ruined every playlist by being the first song.
Together Stronger though? That shit’s legit. In general, it seems like we as a (British) nation have lost the knack for writing great football songs. Perhaps the inescapable, but undeniably brilliant, Three Lions in 1996 seemed like a natural pinnacle for the genre, both artistically and commercially, and soon FA Cup finals would no longer be contested between Shouting for the Gunnersand If It’s Wednesday Must Be Wembley. As we saw in World Cup 2026, the Bosnians still have that dog in them, but in the UK it seems like a lost art. You know who did the official 2026 World Cup song for England? Nobody!! Because there wasn’t an official England 2026 World Cup song!!! This used to be a country…
Football songs can be brilliant though (please disregard the previous examples), but it’s a difficult job to combine proper songcraft with the energy of the football terraces and the communal intensity of football chants (“You’re shit, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah” doesn’t really translate into a three minute pop song). Honestly, The Manics did as good a job as anyone ever has, and artistically Together Stronger is easily one of the greatest football songs ever. It’s a legitimately great anthemic rock song, and has an infectious energy that you simply don’t get from Chris Kamara’s Sing for England. All their career, the sports loving band had promised that, should Wales ever get to a tournament, they would record the official theme tune. And here they were, fucking doing it, egos absolutely disregarded. It may be a great rock song, but it is unmistakably a football song, so the Welsh football anthem I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You is referenced, and every single member of the squad is given a shout out. James Dean Bradfield must have thought he’d seen the last of cramming overlong lines into a coherent melody after Richey disappeared, but then Hal Robson-Kanu turns up.
It’s incredibly silly, but this is the Manics doing a song about football, so combines two of the universe’s most belovedly silly things.Yet, because it’s the Manics, there is real emotion underneath this silliness, and the lyric “Lets not forget Gary Speed/He wore his heart upon his sleeve” is a lovely touch. The former Wales manager Gary Speed killed himself in 2011. Speed was massively responsible for the national team’s upturn in form, and no sensible thinker would suggest that Wales qualifying for Euro 2016* would have been possible without his great work. Making sure that an absent figure who was once a vital cog in the machine isn’t forgotten was obviously important to the band for some reason, and the tribute to Speed is a quintessential Manics move. Even when the band are having the most fun possible, they’ll always take the time out to remind you of the more serious stuff.
(*reaching the freaking semi final thanks to a goal by, that’s right, Hal Robson-Kanuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…)
Didn’t break the UK top 100 at the time, though Wikipedia claims that it reached number one on physical sales, which is the kind of completely unsourced statement that I can get behind. It was also the last CD single that the band released, so we can only assume that every single the band released after 2016 would have been as successful and People Give In was the true 2017 Christmas number one.
Oh, the graffiti You left on me Means every part Is still bleeding
I’ve decided to just use the blanket term ‘Non Album’ this time for any B-side, special release or curiosity this time, because what do you mean “Only available on the Japanese release of ‘Lifeblood'”?? This also means the incredible Soulmates can also stand as another example of how much of the band’s best work in the ‘LB’ era didn’t make it onto the best/worst album of their career. Not even officially available in the UK until the aforementioned twentieth anniversary rerelease, Soulmates is an absolutely heart wrenching exercise in painfully restrained longing.
“Dude, do you think it’s about Richey?””
Sorry, you must be new here: literally every song Nicky Wire has written after 1995 is about Richey. The previous song on this list was previously called Together Mirbeau (C’Mon Richey) and it was just repurposed once Wales qualified for Euro 2016. It was just luck that lines like “Hennessey, Allen, King and Collins” could so easily be inserted into “Misery, suffering and longing”.
Outside life brings down genocide And consumer self-hate leads to designer bullshit Hate is art and we steal cars Decaying flowers in the playground of the rich
The title track of 1990’s ‘New Art Riot EP‘ made #89 five years ago but falls out this time. However, the second track Strip it Down makes the list this time. Am I going to just have each of the EP’s four songs have turns making an appearance on the 100 Greatest list? Guess we’ll find out in 2036.
I do feel like the adorably frenetic EP always needs to be referenced though. While the first release by the band called Manic Street Preachers was the overwhelmingly Clash indebted (yes, even more than usual) Suicide Alley back in 1988, that was released back when the band were officially a three piece at the time of release, between the departure of original bassist Miles ‘Flicker’ Woodward and Richey being promoted from being the band’s driver (and who had taken the photo for the Suicide Alley single cover), and lacking pretty much all of the ingredients that would soon make the Manics the most remarkable new rock band in the country. And also, let’s be honest now, Suicide Alley is pretty fucking shit, isn’t it?
The ‘New Art Riot EP’ was where things really started to kinda come together. An absolutely ruthless explosion of riffs, politics and ridiculously overelaborate lyrics. And for Strip it Down the band are instead far more influenced by…
well…
OK, The Clash again, but the more ambitious and politically literate ‘London Calling‘ Clash this time, rather than the stripped down imitation of the 1977 debut on Suicide Alley. The whole EP saw Richey and Nicky crack the code of the mix of despair and fury that would soon make the band very special to a whole lot of despaired and furious fans, and Strip It Down (“My only way is down on disease that tries to suffocate”) was perhaps the EP’s most concise and punchy example. It was also the first Manics song where JDB allowed himself to indulge in his Slash fantasies, and rip a big, choking, Jack Daniels and cocaine, hair metal riff that’s made for drunk driving down the Sunset Strip on the way to LA’s seediest strip club. Absolute anathema to the sort of straight edged militant punk the band were previously attempting to mimic, but it unlocked a more glamorous and hedonistic style that the band would soon perfect. Does it have a line as good as New Art Riot‘s “Hospital closures kill more than car bombs ever will”? No, but maybe no other song ever has a line as good as that, so you’ll take what you get and be thankful, OK?
Longing for It’s been a long time longing for To carry the sky away
That bassline though, yeah? Just listen to that dangbassline!
Those lyrics though, yeah? What the fuck with those fucking lyrics?? Like far too much of ‘LB’, the scandalously funky Always/Never‘s lyrics are intentionally vague and sparse to fit in with the album’s wider themes of uncertainly and inconclusiveness. The album’s somewhat admirable detachment means the emotions are never easy to pin down, which of course went over like a turd hidden inside an unexpected council tax bill with the Manics’ ‘Legacy Fans’. The music of ‘LB’ is often incredible, but aside from the first two tracks I challenge you to find any lyric that you yourself couldn’t have written on the back of your textbook in secondary school English class. See that lyric at the top of this entry? That’s as good as it gets.
A shot from shots, the androgyny fails Odalisque by Ingres yet your bones for sale Pornographic, this is pornographic Pornographic
Always/Never at #95, Pretension/Repulsion at #94?? We’re going forward slash crazy over here! How much are you going to bet that Enola/Alone is #93 and Everyone Knows/Nobody Caresis #92??
Well, don’t. Neither of those songs made the list. Enola/Alone is the weakest song on the first half of ‘Everything Must Go’ by quite some distance, and while I have a lot of time for Everyone Knows/Nobody Cares as another example of the strong ‘LB’ era B-sides, it sadly missed the cut. You should stop making such rash betting decisions based on small coincidences, it’s the reason why those Albanian friends of yours have been forced to cut off your little finger.
pornographic, this is pornographic
‘Journal for Plague Lovers’ was the exorcism of ghosts that saw the Manics make peace with their past, come to terms with their trauma and, essentially, draw a curtain over their previous career and become a completely different band. Before Richey Edwards’s disappearance in 1995, the bands lyricist, Minister of Propaganda and (lol) “guitarist” had given a folder of lyrics, haikus, collages and drawings to his co-lyricist Nicky Wire, and given photocopies of it to Sean and JDB. A few weeks later, Richey was gone, and the rest of the band decided these final words were a cursed text that needed to be hidden away in Hanger 51 like the Ark of the Covenant. The band included a handful of Richey lyrics on their first album after his disappearance (‘Everything Must Go’, which I might have mentioned on this blog recently), but only the songs that Richey had heard being produced when he was still present. They couldn’t touch anything else. They had to wait for Richey to come back. Any day now. Only when Richey returned would they be permitted to reopen that Ryman’s folder Ricey had drawn a picture of Bugs Bunny with the word ‘OPULENCE’ scrawled onto his cheek. What did that mean? There’s no saying. And it’s not for them to say anyway. Richey would explain it all when he returned. Immediately after his disappearance, the band would scan the folder looking for clues as to Richey’s whereabouts, but when that yielded nothing they just stashed the cursed tome away and tried not to think too much about it.
The ghost of Richey hung over the band for 15 years, during which time they battled with their own history and their own sense of self as if never being set on what it was they were supposed to be. What it was their fans wanted. What it was Richey wanted. The confident and anthemic ‘Everything Must Go’ was followed by the melancholic and subdued ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours‘, as if the band were guilty for sounding so grandiose on that previous record. Then the band felt guilty for abandoning the crazed political punk that had been the band’s raison d’etre during the Richey era, so loudly and angrily apologised with the fucking bonkers ‘Know Your Enemy’. But then – oh shit – isn’t that more disrespectful?? Weren’t the band now just paying lip service to their friend’s legacy? The band hit the brakes urgently with the elegiac and apologetic ‘Lifeblood’*, an album explicitly themed around being haunted by forces you’re struggling to overcome. But then – FUCK! – nobody liked that album! We’re really sorry! We know that’s not what we’re supposed to be! We know that’s not what he would have wanted! Here, take ‘Send Away the Tigers’! Let’s rock like it was 1992! Rendition! Rendition! Blame it on the coalition! Every Manics record was a reaction to the last one, the band never comfortable in their own skin while they were never free from the doubts of that imagined ghost. All while that Ryman’s folder lay unopened.
(*are you sick of hearing about that album by now? I sure am. #WorstAlbumEver)
JDB was the first to let his curiosity overwhelm him. In around 2002 he started to peruse the folder of lyrics, even started playing with the idea of songs that would fit these cryptic commandments. “I’d always close the book, like ‘No, don’t go there. What’s the point of doing it when it may never get done?‘”. The lowkey commercial comeback of ‘SATT’ – the band’s biggest success in a decade – re-energised the band after the depressing ‘LB’ cycle, and lead to conversations about how best to capitalise on their new momentum.
I’ve got an idea, actually, suggested JDB…
So the band decided to attempt the impossible: finally recording Richey’s last words. The sense of the ‘Holy Bible II‘ was encouraged with a cover featuring the same Gill Sans typeface and another painting by Jenny Saville. The band hired Steve Albini, who as well as being a dedicated connoisseur of child porn also famously produced Nirvana’s merciless ‘In Utero’ record, which had often been regarded* as the US equivalent of the Holy Bible in terms of artistic heights and emotional depths.
However, ‘Journal for Plague Lovers’ in an entirely distinct record from ‘The Holy Bible’. It pays it’s respects – viewing the band’s 1994 masterpiece as a suitable proxy to pay tribute to Richey himself – but it’s no simple homage. It’s art rock classic, with Albini’s noncey fingers ensuring it hits with precision with not an ounce of excess, and stands up as one of the band’s very finest. Artistically, it’s an unqualified success. Psychologically, it was an even greater accomplishment.
(*by people in the UK at least. Nobody in America thinks that, because nobody has a fucking clue who the Manics are in America)
After they exorcised those ghosts, a weight seemed to be lifted from the band. From 2009 onward, their albums were no longer nervously reacting to the reception of their last one, designed to placate their invisible fourth member who they still imagined judging all their work. The band’s 2010, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2021 and 2025 albums were sometimes, interesting experiments, sometimes meat and potatoes, sometimes conceptually challenging, sometimes stultifying normiecore, sometimes amazing, sometimes so fucking bad, but saw the trio performing outside of their own heads for the first time and just creating whatever they wanted. Whatever you think of ‘JFPL’ (and, to be clear, if you don’t like it you’re a fucking idiot) it was the most important Manics album since ‘Everything Must Go’.
Though the ‘Holy Bible II’ thing is massively overstated, and much of ‘JFPL’s tracks would feel laughably out of place on the band’s magnum opus, Pretension/Repulsion is as ‘Holy Bible’ as suffering from anorexia at Buchenwald. Dark, acerbic and with the unnerving claustrophobia of a tightening coffin, it’s simple and heavily Nirvana-indebted horror-grunge is a morbid highlight.
Appearing in more repeats The mirror man has seen defeat
It all started, like so many monumental moments in musical history, with a portaloo.
Honestly, I still can’t find a better photo than this blurry nonsense. Has Billy Bragg sold his original photograph as a NFT??
The Manics have never been fans of Glastonbury, considering it a gross celebration of bourgeois decadence, where trustafarian future members of the Conservative party wax lyrical about the quality of the ‘ganja’ while listening to The Foo Fighters. Hey, not (necessarily) my opinion, don’t shoot the messenger. When they first played the festival in 1994, Nicky Wire suggested from the stage that they should “build a bypass over this shit-hole”, while Richey was asked by a music paper what his three favourite and least favourite things about the festival were:
So, “mixed feelings” about the festival, I think it’s fair to say. Their antipathy would only be further justified in 1999, headlining the Pyramid Stage while still touring 1998’s ‘TIMTTMY’, the album that had brought unimaginable success but had so divided the fanbase. As a live act, the band were still struggling both to come to terms with that empty space that had suddenly opened up to the right of the stage, and to successfully translate the reduced thrills of much of their new music to the live arena. Their Glastonbury set was… fine… certainly nothing special, but it was backstage at the festival where something rather appropriate was going to hit the fan.
Veteran left-wing folk singer Billy Bragg sent a photo to the press of an offending portaloo backstage that included, nailed to its door like some Lutheran proclamation, the strongly worded reminder that “THESE FACILITIES ARE RESERVED EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS – PLEASE RESPECT THAT. THANK YOU”. Bragg jokingly mocked how poorly this meshed with their apparent socialist beliefs. The whole scandal blew up into ‘Toiletgate’, possibly one of the dumbest controversies in 90’s British music (and that’s saying a lot – just two years earlier Jarvis Cocker wiggling his bum at Michael Jackson was discussed at the UN), with people questioning if the band were truly embracing the egalitarian spirit of the festival, that the terrible toilets were “the essential shared trauma that unites the megastars with the fans in the mosh-pit”*. Billy Bragg would challenge the band to a public debate, because, yeah, we were still two years away from 9/11 and we were all really stuck for things to do or talk about. Years later, Wire would claim the band were more concerned about other musicians snorting cocaine in there than anything else, and anyway, it was all a joke, yeah? Also, Tom Jones got his own private toilet in 2015 (which nobody cared about because, y’know, at that age…), so have we not considered that the Welsh are just really pristine users of ablution chambers and that all the rest of us are fucking disgusting?
what I’m saying is, it wasn’t unusual… Fuck you, that’s gold
(*Christ, did I really used to go to music festivals every summer? The fuck was I thinking?)
So, yes, that was all very silly and overblown, and probably all deserved to be forgotten about in a few days. But it really did seem to rattle the band. They would never admit it, but their subsequent actions point to a band who honestly did start to question whether they were losing touch, whether they were in danger of losing their edge, whether they even deserved those private portaloos. They obviously spent a couple of weeks grappling with these questions before angrily realising “No, fuck all of y’all, we’re the Manic Street motherfucking Preachers, son!”. Their next festival appearance was headlining T in the Park 1999, where they delivered an aggressive and impassioned performance that firebombed the whole of Scotland and was the complete opposite of their anaemic Glastonbury set. They seemed both hurt by the suggestion that they’d somehow abandoned their socialist principles but also enraged by the suggestion that the band don’t deserve better treatment than their worthless indie peers. It’s the great paradox that has always beat at the heart of the Manic Street Preachers: equality for all and fuck your dividing power structures, but also screw all of you, you’re all scum and we’re so much better! Nicky furiously spat fire at different and random targets between every song, from a poor guy checking his watching the audience (““Fuck off home you prick, get out of my fucking sight! Get back to your fucking Horlicks!”), obviously at Billy Bragg (“I wouldn’t want your dick pissing in my toilet for all the money in the world!”) and, curiously, The Beta Band (“If everybody wants to go fuck off and see that pile of shit bunch of drugged up arseholes playing in a tent to one person, fuck off now!”), a strange one way feud that was never explained. Man, Iloved The Beta Band…
The band were kicking against the pricks that ‘TIMTTMY’ had turned them into, the safe and ultra mainstream band that would happily hoover up any Brit Awards that the ruling class would feed them. They would end the year central to an entire country’s Millennium celebrations, then start 2000 by releasing a shameless punk throwback that quoted both Noam Chomsky and Albert Camus and that ended up the first new number 1 single of the 21st century. For a small slither of time, The Manics rejecting their commercialisation ironically turned them into arguably the biggest band in the country.
…then the album they released to capture this energy was complete commercial suicide and they were never even remotely as successful ever again.
‘Know Your Enemy’ was neither the hit single saturated commercial rock that the band’s mainstream fans might have wanted, but it was also definitely not the punk rock reawakening that the Legacy Fans might have expected after the fiery live performances and near performative Manicsness of Masses Against the Classes. It remains by far the weirdest album the band have ever released, 75 minutes (!) of impassioned and more than occasionally bewildering left wing sloganeering set to the backdrop of pretty much every musical genre you could imagine. Though the band’s immediate post-Toiletgate enraged precision focus may have suggested they knew exactly what direction they were going to take the band in next, ‘KYE’ revealed that they actually had no idea and simply wanted to enjoy the freedom of dong whatever the fuck they wanted without thoughts of commercial viability (but little gems like Ocean Spray and #40 still proved that the band are always geniuses at crafting pop songs, whether they’re trying to or not).
And the album is… kind of amazing… Absolutely bonkers, of course, but such a huge amount of bizarrely effective experiments that it’s moved from ‘fascinating failure’ into the ‘perplexing success’ category. My Guernica is perhaps the perfect encapsulation of the album’s strange powers. It’s absolute controlled chaos, with electronic stabs and fuzz peddles cackling under a Nicky Wire lyric that compares his own inner turmoil to the freaking Spanish Civil War and also throws out the kind of literary references that are scattered all over the album – “Alfred J Prufrock would be proud of me!!”. The 2022 rerelease balked at the original’s insanity slightly, toning down the reverb and the fuzz to present the song as a slightly less demented beast. Oh, and Nicky Wire corrected the reference to TS Elliot’s ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock‘. However, I still prefer the original’s complete frenzy: it’s insane, it’s exhausting, it’s utterly imperfect, it’s absolutely fucking brilliant.
Colossal, endless like a marathon God knows what makes the comparison God knows what makes the comparison For the empty souls
Right, OK, so it sounds a bit like New Year’s Dayby U2, I accept that. Only, it’s much, much better, yeah? It’s not by fucking U2 for a start…
This brilliant, sparse and beautiful song represents the strange paradox of ‘Lifeblood’. Commercially, the album was an absolute failure, their lowest selling record and depressingly indicative of how far they’d fallen away from the national zeitgeist that they recently brushed against. It was so obviously a complete failure that the band/label quickly just abandoned any promotion – the record got its initial comeback single (which we’ll get to) and then this glacial beauty as the follow up, then the whole operation was called off. The band were even forced to release a limited edition EP (‘God Save the Manics‘, which is… fine) just for something to do with all the planned b-sides they were planning to back the singles with. Regardless of the album’s artistic quality, it’s fair to say that its release was an absolute dumpster fire.
However, both the comeback single and Empty Souls charted at number two in the UK singles chart, higher than any other Manics single save their two number ones. You might think I’m leading to a intelligent analysis of the situation, but… no, I don’t understand… Maybe it’s simply because they’re both such freaking bangers?
You know who’snumber 2 in the UK singles chart at the moment? Choosin’ Texas by Ella Langley, the song that has recently broken the record for spending 23 weeks at number one in the USA! That’s how big the Manics were!!
We have to talk about the line ‘Collapsing like the Twin Towers’ though…
…that’s… That’s quite a line, isn’t it…? Changed to ‘Collapsing like dying flowers’ for the single release, which I get is better, but it’s also kind of worse, you know?
I don’t know if I’m tired And I don’t know if I’m ill My cheeks are turning yellow I think I’ll take another pill
Oh, God, talk about normiecore, right? Australia might be the band’s most lackadaisically ubiquitous, uninspired, casually adopted, Sunday-night-Glastonbury-headliner, Love Island soundtrack, kebab and potatoes, Brit Pop cretin that they’ve ever produced. ‘The Lads’ will use it to soundtrack drunken domestic abuse and the Australians themselves would probably use it to – somehow – justify being even more like a white supremacist ethnostate. And it’s not like you can really curse the normies for so hideously misinterpreting the lyrics, because there’s barely anything here to interpret. Nicky is really bummed out so wants to go as far away as possible, which would obviously be Australia on the other side of the world*. OK. Fine. I guess the band were now catering to the intellectual level of their target audience. Can the band please raise their ambitions above pub jukebox background music and indie dad rock??
(*although, erm, technically the other side of the world from Nicky’s house in Newport would be the coordinates 51° 34′ 18.8″ S, 177° 1′ 29.1″ E and be right in the middle of the fucking Pacific Ocean and far closer to New Zealand, if anything. Jesus Christ, this guy can’t get anything right!!)
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, it’s a tune though, isn’t it? Somewhere between the band explaining in ‘168 Songs...’ how surprisingly complex and hard to play the song’s bottled chaos is (Nicky: “If it goes too fast it falls apart, but it has to be on the edge to fly. It’s such a hard one”) and revisiting ‘EMG’ this year for its 30th anniversary and reintroducing myself for the first time in years to a song that once used to haunt every supermarket radio you ever heard , made me accept what a cracking rock song it is. No, it ain’t deep, bro, and its sonic ambitions still lay firmly within the confines of an uber-conventional 90s rock song, but it works within those conventions so well. As I proved to myself, if you hear it 654 times a day on every commercial radio station and in store playlist for a solid three or four years, you’ll grow to hate it, but taken on its own terms (and in moderation) it truly is a banger.
Wait until you read my You Stole the Sun From My Heart reappraisal at #62!!!
Lol, only joking, I still hate that piece of shit.
Stop playing that song live!! I’ve been forced to listen to that abomination more times than any other song I hate that isn’t about Christmas!!!
Welcome to these slave trades Drained of delusion and buried in debt How the hell do we find each other suffering auto intoxication But disaster isn’t coming, it’s already arrived I am so lucky, I think that I survived
Yeah, I know, all you sweaty marks are thinking “How embarrassing for him to basically base his entire list last time around how without merit the execrable ‘Postcards From a Young Man’ album was and then to shamelessly start putting songs from it on the best ever!”. However, I – as a far more disciplined and thoughtful character – consider self-criticism as a core Communist practice, and me correcting my mistakes simply demonstrates how prepared I am for the upcoming revolution. As I always say, dust will accumulate if a room is not cleaned regularly, our faces will get dirty if they are not washed regularly. My previous opinions may also collect dust, and also need sweeping and washing. I do not fear criticism because I am a Marxist, the truth is on my side, and the basic masses, the workers and peasants, are on my side [Mao Zedong/毛泽东: ‘On Self Reflection and That Pish Album Postcards’ (1942)]. Which is all to say: OK, fine, the album has a couple of bangers.
An incredibly complex and constantly changing song that manages to be both the album’s most dreamy (Pah! faint praise…), most electrifying (Pah! faint praise…) and most chaotic (Pah! faint praise…) moment. An incredibly ambitious song that never stands still, swinging between woozy swathes to jittery punk, from fentanyl to good old fashioned amphetamines. And maybe an all timer Nicky lyric, likening the constant barrage of hate clicks and doom scrolls to a condition where you’re basically eaten from the inside with your own bile. And I’ve rarely related to any Nicky lyric as much as “I am so lucky, I think that I survived” – I’m already pathetically addicted to Twitter considering my age, but if I was young enough for social media to exist when I was at secondary school I swear me and about a dozen of my friends would have killed ourselves before we reached the age of 14.
Everywhere you look, everywhere you turn The future fights the past, the books begin to burn I’ll walk you through the apocalypse Where me and you could co-exist
Rum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum, HEY!
I always add a “HEY!” to that pre-chorus bass build up, and kind of resent the band for not including it in the song.
A great, great, great single, with an infectiously anthemic chorus that’s impossible to ignore, and a perfect introduction to the surprisingly ABBA-esque song structures the band’s new piano-centric writing style would now produce.
A lot of latter day Nicky lyrics, rather than arguing a viewpoint or presenting a scenario, are simply about having an opinion that might be controversial, but being far too cowardly to explain what that opinion is. A particularly gross example is Deleted Scenes from the band’s most recent album: “The ecstasy of making things worse/Seems to have become a worldwide curse/This self-censorship made me weak”. Out of context, the lyrics have value in a country that sees no problem in banning the Manics’ contempries forsimply expressing a slight distaste for the genocide their country is taking part in. In the context of the whole album though, it rings pathetically hollow. Here’s your chance, big Nick, you have the standing and the privilege to write whatever you want and get those ‘deleted scenes’ out there, speak truth to power, say whatever you want – no – need to say.
Sooooooooooooooooooooo, which one of these brutal truth bombs are the people trying to silence? Was it Decline and Fall‘s comment on being in the Manics for a long time? Do the CIA have you on a watchlist afterLate Day Peaks‘ rumination on taking things easier when you get older? Are you scared to even answer the phone after you dared write Dear Stephen, about how you still listen to Morrissey despite him being a bit of a wrong ‘un?
You can’t spend so much time complaining about cancel culture when you have such little to say.
And then there’s Orwellian, with its comments on how “books begin to burn/Words wage war, meanings being missed”, and the quite astonishing statement that “It feels impossible to pick a side”. It’s such a politically illiterate lyric and actually irrational how angry it makes me. “Pick a side“?? Between what?? Unless you’re clear about which two sides you’re struggling over, it’s a completely useless statement This was 2021, so was it the COVID lockdown? The January 6th thing? The withdrawal from Afghanistan? Are you talking about Labour and Conservative?? Otherwise you may as well be saying there’s “Fine people on both sides”. From what I can gather, it’s about Wire feeling alienated much of current left wing thinking. Like what?? Take a point and argue your case! What exactly do you have a problem with??
It’ll be trans rights.Nicky is in his fifties, he thinks trans people are a bit weird, so he’s willing to throw out all other left wing beliefs, settle into the cowardly middle ground and yet still think his thoughts on politics carry any validity. He doesn’t want to say this because he thinks people will get mad at him, he can’t defend his position, and that will upset him.
Love’s in hiding, hate displayed Keep the curtains drawn all day The mirror is a trap that saves Or a debt that makes you pay
I’m just playing, Nicky, you know I love you.
I have repeated many times precisely how ass‘Intimism‘ is – Nicky Wire’s insipid and feather-light nothingness of a second solo album – but the fact it can be at least partially credited for the glory of Hiding in Plain Sight means I will begrudgingly accept that it wasn’t a complete, unadulterated, 100% waste of time. 99%, maybe. 99.5%.
Nicky taking lead vocals on a Manics song was a cute little novelty for a long time. It didn’t happen for the first time until 2001, either on ‘Know Your Enemy’s Wattsville Blues(#90 in 2021) or on Found That Soul B-side Ballad of the Bangkok Novotel, depending on what you’re counting. The main selling point of Nicky’s voice was that it was pretty fucking awful. Whisper weak, no sense of melody, and filled with attempts to mimic JDB’s penchant for elonga-ee-ay-ting words every now and the-ye-ye-yen that would generally sound like a weasel’s last screeches of life as it was drowned in a bathtub full of bleach. But the very awfulness of it bizarrely lent it some credibility – JDB has long had one of the most powerful voices in rock music, and some songs just sounded better being sung by someone with such imperfect pitch he probably wasn’t even aware that different musical notes existed. There’s the ‘Mark E Smith Note’, then there are the times you’re silent, right? Nicky’s 2006 debut solo album was thrashy, rambling fun, but there weren’t many Manics songs that the band thought would benefit from the sound of a mid-to-large rodent being tortured, so Nicky only took the lead on five more Manics songs before 2025.
Then came Nicky’s second solo album in 2023, which, y’know, oh my God please make it stop, but it also saw Wire develop far more of a legitimate singing voice. Sure, songs like Contact Sheets were ass upon ass, but they were at least recognisable melodies and legitimate songs that Nicky managed to hold together with a reserved but completely legible vocal performance. The tunes were shite, but at least Nicky’s voice was carrying them and seemed to have removed those cloths from his ears! Imagine what he could do with a good song!
On ‘Critical Thinking’ in 2025, motherfucker got some good songs. Nicky is giving the album opener and closer, and performs both with aplomb. I loved the opening title track (“Net neutrality, smart meters/Smart water/Smart fucking motorways/Body positivity/Believe in yourself/Imposter syndrome, fuck that!!”) so much that I almost literally played it to death in 2025, to the point where I’m not sure I ever want to hear it ever again and it doesn’t even make the top 100. It’ll be top 30 in 2031 after we’ve finished out trial separation. And OneManMilitia is a perfect album closer, a classic angry Manics self analysis, part vulnerable questioning, part enraged riposte to the haterz (“The truth is a dead disease/I can’t breathe when I hate this much/I’m gonna burn all my fucking flags/I sound like a dying cause/I won’t listen anymore”).
Hiding in Plain Sight, though, is The Real Shit.
An utterly beautiful, poignant yet exhilarating State of the Manics Address. It’s one of the few latter day Manics songs where they both act and sound their age and that’s a compliment rather than an embarrassment. The first Manics single to be sung by Nicky Wire, its booming radio friendly, anthemic quality would have mad it a huge hit a couple of decades ago. Is it a Nicky Wire lyric about how things were better in the past? Yes, it’s a Nicky Wire lyric about how things were better in the past. But here that nostalgia is accepted as a crux, and Nicky is recognising how detrimental this yearning is, but still accepting how he will always be in love “With the man I used to be/In a decade I felt free”. Nicky and JDB even get seperate guitar solos which – c’mon – must have been JDB’s inner rock star dream for decades. While Nicky would argue that ‘LB’ was “The Holy Bible for 35-year-olds” until he was blue in the face (Nicky, stop trying to make ‘The Holy Bible for 35-year-olds’ happen. It’s not going to happen), there’s something very middle aged Faster-coded about Nicky accepting his flaws and resolutely choosing to live with them on Hiding In Plain Sight. He is hate displayed, they call him a man is his fifties still wearing feather boas.
I’m well aware of happiness And what it takes to get to it But the simple struggle of survival Transforms itself into betrayal
The astonishing ‘Futurology’ really came out of nowhere. The two previous records had been the utter abortion of creativity ‘PFAYM’ and the sad and solemn ‘RTF’. The two albums were like the band offered proof that they had nothing left to offer and then doubling down by saying they didn’t care because, really, what’s the fucking point?
Somehow, about nine months later, they returned with their most energised, inspired and effective collection of work since the 90s. ‘Futurology’ sounds like if a slightly less clinically insane person rejigged ‘KYE”. The same passion is there as that 2001 box of frogs, the same eagerness to experiment with different sounds, the same anger, pretty much the same craziness. Only this time properly focused and with more devotion to actually crafting a coherent album, rather than… erm… Well, actually, I’m still not sure what they were trying to achieve with ‘KYW’ but this is better!. I know I’m not legally allowed to split up the accepted top two, but I’m really growing to believe that ‘Futurology’ may well be The Manics’ second best album. They’re twelfth record. Not quite as good as their third. That’s something, isn’t it…? Also, officially the greatest album of 2014, which nobody can ever take away from them.
The album’s laser focused coherence, despite the amount of times it takes left turns musically, is made all the more impressive considering the unusual amount of guest spots on the album. It’s another factor it shares with ‘Know Your Enemy’, but while on that album people like David Holmes and Kevin Shields were often buried under the album’s general noise assault, on ‘Futurology’ artists like Nina Hoss, Cian Ciaran and Georgia Ruth are given central parts and often lead vocals. Perhaps least expected was the 59 year old front man of Scritti Politti, Green Gartside, but it was another inspired choice. Gartside’s nasal, laid back style suits not only the song but complements the album without once threatening the artistic integrity. Lyrically, it’s actually closer to the sort of self doubt and melancholy rife on sister album ‘RRF;’ (“Yes I’m as guilty as the rest/A man of little consequence/Unable of forgiving himself/Still building the bypass in my head”), but delivered with so much more essence and vitality, and backed by a song with real inventiveness.
Oh, and did you notice that “Still building the bypass in my head” line? Remember what Nicky said about Glastonbury?
That’s my pet, Hippo Bored Alone. She bloody loves a reference she does.
Hey, you all loved that T in the Park performance, right?? Looks like the band is getting back to its roots! And what about Masses Against the Classes??? Looking forward to an entire album of similar punk energy??
Cool. Well here’s a fucking disco song that ends with Nicky Wire repeating “Braindead motherfuckers”.
Until I see love in statues Your lessons drill inherited sin Parliament’s a fake life saver You better wake up and smell the real flavour
You love us like a holocaust Same P.R. problem as E.S.T.
Maybe not The Manics’ most famous song, not their most successful, and certainly not their best. But perhaps their theme tune. Their call to arms, their manifesto, their giddy introduction to what wonder the crazy world of Manics fandom could contain. Alright, so actually the #5 song on this list is their real theme tune, but this is a close second! It’s more iconic than it is actually great (though it is great) but if you attended a Manics gig to this day and they didn’t play it you would ask for your money back.
Before you all ask, this place goes the album version rather than the Heavenly version. They’re both great, but I prefer the Guns n’ Roses-esque guitar breakdown at the end to the slightly garish Iggy Pop sample. Although, obviously, it’s a shame to lose the lyric ‘Hey passive electorate/Die! Die! Die!’.
Your future glory’s all empty of thoughts, This beauty, feeling nothing at all, It’s what you wanted, it’s what you got, Your final search for truth has stopped.
Yeah, I know, I know, I know, but don’t worry I’m going to be slagging the album off a lot as well.
After the grand exorcism of ‘JFPL’ ensured that the band’s souls were cleansed, they had finally took that imagined mwnci off their collective ysgwyddau and had escaped from their history. They could now do whatever they wanted. And they decided that, actually, they wanted to be really big again. ‘Big’ as in ‘commercial juggernaut on the levels of ‘EMG’ and ‘TIMTTMY”, but the band figured that the best way to do that would be to go ‘big’ as in “laughably excessive strings and choirs paired with overdubs on top of overdubs like you’re listening to ‘Be Here Now’ produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber”. It was A Choice. The band weren’t guarded about their ambitions though, and proudly declared how the record was going to explode the nation’s balls: “We’re going for big radio hits on this one. It isn’t a follow-up to Journal For Plague Lovers. It’s one last shot at mass communication” said JDB.
Artistically… it’s a near complete failure. A sound full of gimmicks upon accoutrements upon embellishments. The songs have no sense of scale or pacing, and just spaff out an attempted wall of sound featuring 1’500 instruments 0.5 seconds into every song. You hear literally every single thing every song has to offer in its opening two bars, and all it has is almost never enough. There’s no subtlety, there’s no real sense of artistry (with a couple of exceptions), and the songs themselves are an alien’s idea of what music humans like after scrolling through commercial rock radio for ten minutes. Thank God that it was released in 2010, as if songs like Hazeltown Avenuewere released in 2026 we’d just assume they were AI. Worse than that, we’d assume it was the result of an LLM that had been fed far too much Lenny Kravitz. It honestly blows my mind that the band ever consider this album a good idea. A good idea that was going to be commercially successful.
However, in recent times I’ve matured enough, become a bigger person, and reached a zen sort of peace with myself and the world around me, becoming exponentially more handsome in the process: not every song on ‘PFAYM’ is complete shit.
I’ve already been big/handsome enough to doff my cap to Auto-Intoxication this time around. However, that punky, artistically fleetfooted little gem is a bit of an outlier on the overbearing everythingness of ‘PFAYM’, and could have been an album track or b-side from several other, more artistically worthwhile, Manics eras. Some Kind of Nothingness though? Fuck me, this song could only be from this utter monstrosity of an album. One of the least subtle things this most unsubtle of band has ever released, juiced up with so many strings and choir sections until it becomes a huge inflating condom that looks set to burst at any second and result in a very messy situation.
But taken on its own terms, and removed from the rest of the album’s equally excessive bombast (because even though it’s only track three, trust me, you’ll be sick of this shit already), Some Kind of Nothingness stands as a fantastic song that deserves the epic treatment. Not only is it the only actual song on ‘PFAYM’ that’s good enough to not be overpowered by the butter on bacon arrangement, but as shown by the far more stripped down demo, it’s a song that actually suits the excess.
The magical factor may well be Ian McCulloch. The Manics have never hidden how much of an influence Echo and the Bunnymen were on the band. They were the first gig that JDB, Sean and Richey ever went to, and Nicky wrote the lyric with The Mac in mind, referencing the Bunnyman’s Never Stop. We’ve recently discussed Nicky’s singing voice maturing into a heavily McCulloch indebted laconic drawl, giving him the power and the confidence to carry songs of the quality of Hiding in Plain Sight. But, fuck me, The Mac’s performance on this song shows how Nicky has a long way to go before he’s on the same level. Vocally, Nicky’s chords are to short to box with God. Mac’s uniquely deadpan lower register works so well to ground all the madness that’s exploding all around him. The way JDB and him take individual lines each (which was a choice made completely in the studio, with the band simply picking which singer’s line sounded better) is not just a tiny bit of inspiration and thinking outside the box on an album so desperately void of ideas, but it sounds like JDB’s soaring vocals are attempting to pull the song into insane excess each time, before McCulloch brings it back down to Earth. An incredible song, which if it was released as a one off special single – similar to Sharon van Etten and Angel Olsen’s similarly extra Like I Used To– then it may be looked upon as one of the band’s very best.
Ah yes, but how did it all do commercially though? Are you back at rock’s top table, Manics? Was that shot at mass communication reciprocated?
The album peaked at #3 and spent nine weeks in the top 100. The first single, (It’s Not War) Just the End of Love (Sir Not Appearing On This List) peaked at 28, the band’s lowest charting single since 1994’s She Is Suffering (Sir Not Appearing On This List). Luckily, the incredible Some Kind of Nothingness was released as the second single. It peaked at #44, the first Manics single not to make the top 40 since they signed to Sony in 1991, a run of 34 singles).
No not here to be loved Believed in the power and in your blood A perfect echo of your youth Like an anorexic Rodin You re-enact the Tet Offensive It’s why you ended so defensive
those are some mega nips…
I still look forward to new Manics albums, perhaps naively considering it’s now well over a decade since they released a record I’d even describe as very good. This, of course, is a foolhardy endeavor, a lot of hope and expectation leading to rough work trying to sieve through the dredges to find the five tracks in the last decade that are worthy of being on the 100 greatest ever. What seems more likely is being introduced to a song from the band’s past (y’know… back when they were good…?) that I’d not previously considered. B-side of Indian Summer, you say?? Well, that song’s pretty wank, why would paying any attention to the B-sides ever be remotely productive??
Anorexic Rodin is an absolute gem though, quite unlike anything else in the band’s catalogue, and a fascinating glimpse at their mindset at the time. Indian Summer was the fourth and final single released from the lower case commercially successful ‘SATT’ album, and it’s very possible that by the end of 2007 they had decided that their next project was going to be the ominous task of exhuming the literary body of Richey Edwards buried under the car park of their collective remorse. Anorexic Rodin is almost like a preemptive apology to Richey, obviously written in fear that they were about to besmirch his legacy.
Listen, every single song Nicky has ever written is about Richey, so that’s not why Anorexic Rodin stands out. The difference is that with all the other songs he writes about Richey, Nicky will straight up deny it and make up some bullshit story.
Erm, actually, says Nicky, not at all, completely different bridge.
What about how you so beautifully describe Richey as the “Poet who can’t play guitar” on Prologue to History?
Erm, actually, that’s just me. I’m the poet. It’s not that deep, bro.
Ah, but Nicky, mate, Soulmates?? What a beautiful song about the connection you shared with Richey and the empty space that now exists now he’s gone??
Erm, actually, it’s about dogs.
Dogs?
Dogs.
(Sigh) Fine, but at least we can agree that Some Kind of Nothingness is a wonderful reflection on Richey’s memory? “Remember you, stretched out in the sun/All alone forever, conclusions forgone”? That’s gorgeous!
Erm, actually, it’s about my dog.
Dog again, is it?
The lyrics are almost never as explicitly about Richey as they are on Anorexic Rodin. First of all, there’s no other band in the world that would name a song that, so mark that down. Secondly, rather than focusing on the pain of loss, the song seems to be consciously galvanising The Cult of Richey. No other Manics song talks about Richey in such a mythical, devotional way. “No not here to be loved/Believed in the power and in your blood/A perfect echo of your youth/Like an anorexic Rodin… The continuation of your planning/It’s here to stay, it’s here for good/But it’s never gonna hide the truth”. It’s the kind of song I’d write about Richey, for Christ’s sake. It really does strike me as the band trying to preserve the legacy of Richey before they set off to investigate the reality. Musically, it’s also an incredible oddity at the time, but a clear signpost to the style that the band would move towards in ‘JFPL’. However, Anorexic Rodin is far darker and more aggressive than anything on the band’s next album, and is actually far closer to the dark anger of ‘THB’ than anything on ‘JFPL’. And it does so while referencing the Tet Offensive, because this is the Manic Street fucking Preachers, son.
There are times when you feel hopeless Just for once for no one else we are blameless
‘EMG’ was the album that was initially started with Richey’s input but finished in his absence after a long period of wondering whether it was even right to continue as a band without their fourth member and best friend. It ended up being perhaps their most coherent and well constructed commercial rock album, ended up selling around six squillion copies, won them the Brit Awards for Best British Band and Best British Album, propelled them to being arguably the biggest rock band in Britain*, a title they would keep until the honourable career seppuku of ‘Know Your Enemy’.
(*initially in Oasis’s absence, then as Oasis’s replacement after ‘Be Here Now’ took a big, wet, stinky dump over everyone’s chest in 1997)
But ‘EMG’ isn’t a morose and regretful lament for a lost soldier, it’s (musically) a joyful, bombastic and optimistic anthemic rock record. The production is lush and the string arrangements- which would soon become a necessity for British rock after the album’s release- are gorgeous fits for the music and never overused or ever in danger or pushing the music into pomposity. Are you listening, ‘PFAYM’??
For a while, both the mainstream and the legacy fans were happy! With songs like the exhilarating The Girl Who Wanted to be God showing that the band were still willing to combine notable lyrics (a Wire/Edwards collaboration. Wire: “I added ‘Hold me she said, love me to death’, which is not a great line, but I have no idea what his original lyric was about“) that references a letter Sylvia Plath wrote when she was 17 years old, with absolutely infectious rock music. For a while, it seemed that everyone was happy…
Look who’s central to that CD cover! Even more so than Ginger Spice, Tricky, Kula Shaker… Jamiroquai…?
The way those strings kick in though?? Holy Moley, everything’s gonna be alright, isn’t it…?
He did not defend himself He didn’t even raise his hand I will not beg because This is how I am
Another ‘JPPL’ song that wouldn’t be seen dead on ‘The Holy Bible’, and rather utilises a scuzz rock craziness that would fit far better on the wider scuzzy craziness of ‘KYE’.
We have to assume that the song is talking about Marlon Brando and James Dean. The original James Dean, I mean, not his bandmate singing the song. Did you know he was almost called ‘Clint Eastwood Bradfield’?? Christ, that was a bullet dodged. Brando and Dean were both almost mirror images of each other during the 1950’s – worshipped actors, Hollywood royalty, the two biggest male sex symbols of the mid 20th century. In Richey’s eyes, Dean was lucky enough to be cut down in his prime, a car crash in 1955 aged 24. Brando, however, was forced to live the rest of his life, forced to age disgracefully before our very eyes, the cruelty of life taking away all your youthful beauty and turning you into a fat mess. Let’s just say: I relate. Apart from the youthful beauty part. One reading of the song is that Richey is extolling the classic rock and roll idea of living fast, dying young and leaving a good looking corpse. Which is… yeah, uncomfortable…
That’s simply one reading though, and if a Richey lyric didn’t have at least four layers to it then he was obviously feeling quite sick that day. There are also heavy references to the 1967 Brando movie Reflections in a Golden Eye, which deals with repressed sexuality, voyeurism and murder, and where Richey gets the lines about “living without clutter” from. As with most of the lyrics on ‘JFPL’, nobody’s really sure (nobody can even confirm whether ‘JD’ stands for ‘James Dean’), but fuck it, that’s what makes them so fascinating. Now lets stick a drum machine under that and pump the motherfucker up!
“The more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalized, develop scabs, never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything because you always feel too much.”
Imperial body bags, prom queen disposable Children wrapped in home-made flags
Another stonking rocker from ‘SATT’ that, similarly to the album’s title track, manages to marry grim Iraq War referencing lyrics with a simply overjoyously great rock song. And, erm, like unfortunately a few songs on ‘SATT’, it kind of has to be a barnburner musically to allow you to overlook some of Mr Wires more clunky lyrics (‘Nothing’s finished it just fades away/Like a lover who has lost her faith’?? Eugh…), when he’s also capable of writing a chorus that hits as hard as this.
The 80th best Manics song for two consecutive lists though! You can’t buy that consistency.
I first heard this long, sombre and reflective ‘TIMTTMY’ opening track roughly 28 years ago. I absolutely hated it for, oooooooooooooh, let’s say, 26 of those years?
Hearring the Everlasting for the first time as a pathetic, simping Manics fan was… Is ‘traumatic’ too strong a word? Denigrating? It might seem embarrassing to admit* in the current climate of nothing meaning anything and all interests being removable, transitory, passing always, but the opening and agenda setting song from the band’s first album entirely without Richey felt like nothing less than a betrayal. It was legitimately and incredibly upsetting. I don’t think I can properly explain it to a new reality where all the leaders of the Western World are revealed to be child rapists and everyone just shrugs their shoulders and says “Meh, at least they’re not putting black people in Disney movies”.
(*because, y’know, it is)
The Everlasting was the band being among the first to throw their hands up and declare that there was no point to anything, that all us fans had clung onto and believed in for all this time was a waste of time. “I don’t believe in it anymore”, JDB sings “Pathetic acts for a worthless cause”. That shit stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuung! It felt like one great admission of a long con, that the band we’re revealing how stupid the whole thing had been. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? The fact that this admission came over a long, slow and melancholic song delicately hung on a cheap sounding drum machine just made it all the more offensive. “Yeah, everything we did before was all bullshit. Here’s some latter era Genesis soft prog”.
In the beginning When we were winning When our smiles were genuine
But now unforgiven The everlasting Everlasting
Looking back, it was the band committing that most unforgivable of sins: maturing* and evolving far quicker than their audience. The previous record, ‘EMG‘, was an incredible and anthemic celebration of the band still being a going concern, that looking back was aso them drawing an emphatic line under the their first phase. ‘TIMTTMY’ was the real reaction to Richey’s loss, and so was understandably overwhelmingly sorrowful as this band of now three old** men tried to grapple with their new reality. I get that now. However, that still doesn’t mean that large parts of that album aren’t absolute shite, and The Everlasting isn’t some sub David Gray AOR slop.
(*they were 29 years old
**they were 29 years old)
But then, the last time I saw the band live on their ‘Critical Thinking‘ tour, they played The Everlasting. While, I obviously, rolled my eyes when they announced they were playing it – I still considered myself suffering from PTSD from first hearing it in 1998 – something crazy happened when they played it. Right before that stinging “I don’t believe in it anymore” line, the previous two lyrics really landed with me for the first time:
Oh you’re old I hear you say It doesn’t mean that I don’t care
…and – ooooooof!!!– it hit me in the feels, man. It also triggered an almost out of body experience where I was able to escape from my history and truly appreciate the song for the first time. I was able to witness myself experiencing the gorgeous, epic and delicately string laden classic as the wonderful piece of music it is. And, yeah, I get it. It’s described beautifully by Keith Cameron as “The moment of walking through an open door, beyond which nothing will ever be the same, and taking one last look behind before bowing to the inevitable forward motion of time”. You got it, Keith, mate, that was exactly what hearing it that night at the O2 Apollo in Manchester felt like. It was hardly the first time that the band ruefully considered an everlasting nothingness, and was far from the last time they’d mournfully consider their past glories.
That refugee line is fucking criminal though, someone should be shot for that.
Oh, and they also played You Stole the Sun from My Heartfor the six billionth time, but that is also Sir Not Appearing On This List. Because it’s fucking waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank and is categorically unforgivable.
I had a vision but it slipped away Inherited goodness, it is here to stay It’s not about us anymore It’s not about us, ’bout us anymore
OK, let’s get this out of he way first: The Masses Against the Classes is an absolutely fucking ridiculous song. The Manics playing dress up as themselves, trying their hardest to ape the qualities that they possessed roughly a decade earlier. It starts with a recording of Noam Chomsky and ends with JDB shouting a quote from Albert Camus*, because why the fuck not?. The single’s cover was the freaking Cuban flag**. No song in the band’s history was them trying quite so hard. It was released and then immediately deleted from supply on the same day in January 2000, like it was intended as a crazy little secret between the band and their Legacy Fans.
(*”A slave begins by demanding justice, and ends up wanting to wear a crown”. Alright, bro, cool. But what does that actually mean? Like, in the context of the song? Are the band the slaves that are now demanding to wear a crown? The new,‘TIMTTMY’ fans? The Legacy Fans?? Who’s demanding to wear a crown, Manics?? Is it the band that are now tired of wanting to be treated on the same level as their peers and want to be recognised as fucking kings? When were they ‘slaves’ though?? I dunno, guys…
**without the star in the red triangle, which… means… something…?)
It still sold enough copies to become the first new number one of the 21st century. Because, despite its inherent nonsense, it still hits hard. It was the band angrily shouting fuck you to the new fans with no understanding of the band’s core beliefs, fuck you to the Legacy Fans who the band believe just felt left out by their success and – most importantly – lines, fuck you, Billy Bragg! The opening line “Hello, it’s us again” was an explicit call to the Legacy Fans that the old Manics were back. Here was the sloganeering, the hatred, the radical leftism, the songs about simply being the Manic Street Preachers. Her was the the nonsense – good God, the nonsense! And, yes, such naked pandering absolutely worked, just like it would years later with the ‘SATT’ album. After all the confusion and introspection of the ‘TIMTTMY’ era, it was a screamed reminder that The Manics were “The only thing left to believe in”. To hit number one with such an aggressive and discordant piece of agitprop solidified the band as the biggest rock act in the country after Oasis’s sad ‘Be Here Now’ demise. If the next album was just more of this, then it would go supernova!
As a reminder of a (short) moment in the band’s career where everything appeared possible, where it really seemed like they were going to walk on this nation, walk on this racist power structure, and they were going to say to the whole damn government “‘Stick ’em up motherfucker, this is a hold-up! We’ve come for what’s ours!”, it’s wonderful. As a song though, it has aged badly. Perhaps because of the confused and impenetrable genius of that upcoming career killing album, The Masses Against the Classes just sounds like the band kicking their shoes off for a couple of minutes and… getting kinda silly .
Great fun!
Very silly
Its b-sides, however, have aged far better, like fine molotovs. Close My Eyes not only exceeds the main single artistically, but acts as a brilliant companion piece to it. While the a-side drips in so much BFE (‘Big FUCK-ALL-Y’ALL Energy’) that it’s astounding that it doesn’t spontaneously combust, Close My Eyes instead details some of the sadness that triggered that anger. While Masses… was all about screaming to the fans that their recent success hadn’t seeped away all their passion, Close... is the other side of the coin, detailing how maybe this widespread adoption of the band by those dreaded casuals wasn’t a lot of fun for them either. “Shake some hands and then I feel ashamed… Back to reality back to fuck all/It’s not about us anymore”. The looped drums and the incessant piano combine with unusually not irritating ‘being famous sucks, man!’ lyrics combine to result in one of the band’s best b-sides.
Aw, man! I can’t wait for the next album! If i sounds like these two songs it’s going to be straight fire!
And all the drugs in the world Can’t save us from ourselves
Yeah, but what if The Everlasting was better??
As a previously unreleased song tagged onto a greatest hits album to convince the sweatiest of marks to pay hard cash for truncated radio edits of shit they already own (🙋♀️), There By the Grace of God is pretty miraculous. Perhaps one of the band’s greatest and yet underappreciated singles, JDB’s experimenting with an Electro-Harmonix bass synth pedal introducing a more glacial and darky electronic sound that the band would extrapolate on in their next album, ‘Lifeblood‘, but done far more successfully than most of that album would manage. A minor career highlight in a spot you’d expect bands to release half-arsed filler.
You want half-arsed filler though? Their ‘National Treasures: Complete Singles’ album in 2011 was accompanied by a cover of The The’sThis Is the Day. Hey, at least the “All the money in the world couldn’t buy back those day” is a bit of a reference.
not now, Hippo Bored Alone…
The band themselves far preferred the newly recorded greatest hits’ title track, 4 Ever Delayed, to be the lead single, which ended up not even making the album. An early sign that even the band realised this new electronic heavy direction wasn’t going to work.
Loose and guilty and whipped Sterility persecutes and I have plenty Bruised and nailed and quit Merciful and mourned and meek
Jealousy sows rejection with a kiss In silken palms that tear bone from skin
When the Manics released their first album ever with lyrics 100% written by Richey, 14 years after his disappearance, the links to ‘THB‘ were immediately played up by the media. ‘THB’ was the final masterpiece that Richey gave the world, an unmatched and searing hot knife across the human soul (including the lyric “Mr Stalin – bisexual epoch”), and ‘JFPL’ would finally complete the troubled writer’s descent into the heart of darkness. The band were guilty of playing up to this, with the record bearing the same quasi-Russian typeface as the 1994 classic and also having a painting by Jenny Saville on the cover (art which supermarkets, obviously, deemed ‘inappropriate’). The album was endlessly referred to as ‘The Holy Bible 2.0’ on release.
Excuse my language, but this is complete bunkum and podsnappery. Musically, there are maybe two or three songs that wouldn’t stick out like a lacerated thumb on ‘THB’. Generally, each song is simply well suited to the lyrics it contains – which are often far, far more positive and even humorous than those of ‘THB’ – and because of this the album stands apart from anything else in the band’s catalogue. To the extent that a highly esteemed and immensely handsome critic said at the time “the kings of passionate anthem rock have accidentally made a post-punk masterpiece“.
This Joke Sport Severed is one such song that would sound ridiculous on ‘THB’. It’s a sparse, lovely little song with subtlety and space between both the music and the lyrics which you were never likely to get with either ‘THB’s lyrics or its claustrophobic and piercing production sound. And towards the end of the song you get strings! There are no freaking strings on ‘THB’ unless they’re being tied round the neck of Bosnian war criminals! Musically, songs like Severed… , with its lush sound and unashamed emotional beauty, sound like ‘Everything Must Go 1.5’ rather than ‘The Holy Bible 2.0’. Or would it be ‘Everything Must Go 0.5’? I’m not sure what direction we’re going in…
Who sees the interiors like young Willem once did? A beautiful landscape of your nation Another era is not forthcoming Who sees the interiors like young Willem once did?
The way it crashes in with perfect symmetry, the way it speeds up and breaks down, the instrumental stabs partially cribbed from Saint Etienne’s Nothing Can Stop Us, the effortlessly gorgeous melodies intertwining with each other… It’s The Manics making perfect stadium pop/rock on autopilot (referencing something like a Dutch-American abstract expressionist just comes naturally to them), and proof of how effortless it all was to them in the ‘EMG’ era.
It’s also one of the album’s more interesting lyrics, and remains one of Wire’s strongest to this day. On an album where the band are loudly grappling with their recent history and pushing for the right to be recognised as a continuing (or even completely new) entity, there’s a gorgeous and almost problematic yearning for the ability to create art while forgetting all your past, as Willem de Kooning did when he continued to create paintings despite becoming overcome with Alzheimer’s.
Someone somewhere soon will take care of you I repent, I’m sorry, everything is falling apart Houses as ruins and gardens as weeds Why do anything when you can forget everything
Phew-wee! Few things are needed as much as the sole tiny ray of sunshine This Is Yesterday is needed on ‘The Holy Bible’. It’s like that scene in A Serbian Film where the cast break off from all the rape and forced abortions to sing a full rendition of Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off. It’s just good to lighten the mood a bit sometime, y’know?
“I thought there’s not one moment of oxygen, where people can actually just sit back and realise there is a basic humanity there. Just connecting with the basic premise of if you can flourish in this calm moment, you can flourish in this boredom, you can flourish in this regret”
Of course, being the most genial track on ‘The Holy Bible’ is like being the most generous billionaire or the driest frog in the pond (they’re all pretty wet, right? Billionaires I mean)- it’s all very relative. Yesterday… is still a sad lament to a lost childhood that finds much of its beauty in its intense mournfulness. Significantly, it’s the only song on the album written almost entirely by Wire, meaning that, yes, it’s once again about how much better things were in the past. Its slightly more morose and melancholic feel means that it wouldn’t sound out of place on any of the band’s post-Richey albums.
My dilemma but not my choice Winston Churchill, can you hear my voice? Melodrama there in my kitchen sink Double vision the way it is
Just… gorgeous…
‘TIMTTMY’ can too often feel overwrought and overly intense, but Black Dog On My Shoulder manages to craft an explicit discussion of depression into a serene and almost ironic sweep of near whimsy. One of the jauntiest ever songs about depression, featuring one of the most kissiest of chef’s kisses string arrangements you’re ever likely to hear. By borrowing Churchill’s ‘black dog’ name for depression (or whatever he and Wire may call depression), the band had obviously at least partially forgiven a man they noted “Wished the workers bled to a machine” back in 1994.
But your love alone won’t save the world You knew the secret of the universe Despite it all you made it worse It left you lonely It left you cursed
Not enuff, not enuff, not e-nu-hu-huff…
Hello, it’s us again…
Yep, it’s another big single designed to pop the Legacy Fans and ensure everyone that the band hadn’t forgotten how to plug in the big stadium guitars. After the experimental, sonically brave but in the end slightly insipid ‘Lifeblood’, Your Love… was basically the band running scared from that previous record’s ‘muted’ (read: ‘practically non-fucking-existent’) reception and nestling themselves back into the safe arms of commercially viable radio rock. But, yes, it was again so damn effective that nobody cared.
Nicky, cheerfully, read a news story about a suicide* where the person had left a note that ended in the heartbreaking admission that “Your love alone is not enough”. This inspired a melody in Nickys head, which he would eventually take to JDB. JDB devised counter melodies to compliment and counterpoint Nicky’s idea, inspired by ideas from Which Way to Kyffinhe’d done on his own solo debut album the previous year. Your Love… would be the first Manics song that Wire would contribute musical composition to, and went on to be one of their most famous songs in the outside, normie world. The inclusion of The Cardigans’ lead singer Nina Persson was another example of the band’s enduring ability to choose perfect collaborators, and it’s difficult to think of a Manics song so obviously designed for the stadium crowds that ‘SATT’s success would again propel them back to for a short time.
(*though JDB has also stated it’s the “last line of a suicide note of a friend of somebody we knew really well“. So either JDB’s telling rock mythology porkies, or by the time ‘168 Songs’ was released Nicky had forgot all about this friend, which calls into question how well they knew them)
It’s relatively low down on this list because – fuck me, come on – as stirring as it is, it’s a bit damn basic, isn’t it?? Yeah, we all love it, but sometimes that’s not enough.
Ohmagod! I just thought of that reference while I was writing the line!! I’m a freaking genius.
I mapped out a journey to reach my broken heart Before I even started the plan began to fall apart I’ve built so many walls…
…to keep these feelings true I’ve burnt so many bridges but not the one that Leads to you, the one that leads to you
I may have rashly described ‘Critical Thinking’ as the best of the Manics’ ‘Trilogy of Bland’ when I reviewed the album close to its release. As you were no doubt taught at school, the ‘Trilogy of Bland’ are the three records of slightly differing levels of ‘meh’ that the band have released since they absolutely blew their creative circuits with the incredible ‘Futurology’ in 2014. While there are some truly horrendous songs on ‘TUVL’ – as middle aged men pretending they’re doing a radical protest song go, Don’t Let the Night Divide Us makes Masses Against the Classes sound like Woody fucking Guthrie – in terms of taking unexpected and mildly progressive turns with their music, ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’ probably marks itself out from the rest of the ‘Trilogy of Bland’ simply due to it being at least interesting in parts. Oh, it’s still very much in that trilogy, don’t get me wrong, but there are moments that are almost shockingly experimental.
Willing to be put in my place (Willing to be put in my place) Willing to live in this space (Willing to live in this space) Put you on a pedestal (Put you on a pedestal) Put you there just standing still (Put you there just standing still)
Unlike many of their 90s British rock contemporaries such as Blur, Suede and (especially) peak Oasis, The Manics never really had any accusations of hiding their greatest songs on their B-Sides. They’ve generally always had a good idea which songs are good enough for inclusion, and which songs didn’t quite fit the bill, so their b-sides can often just be songs that weren’t sufficient quality for the album, or occasionally point tantalisingly to future musical directions such as Anorexic Rodin or the #33 song.
Pedestal, though, where do you even place this b-side to the #20 song on the upcoming ‘KYE’ album? Where do you put it on any Manics’ album?? Even when the Manics recontextualised ‘KYE’ in 2022 as the ‘Door to the River’/’Solidarity’ double album “It was always meant to be” (which I’ve always been a bit ‘chinny reckon’ about), there could be no place found for this ghoulish little gem. Motherfucker don’t fit anywhere. A creepy, rumbling song full of repressed but always present abasement. I can honestly say I can’t think of many Manics song that seem to be about an abusive and submissive master/sub relationship (‘Willing to be put in my place/willing to live in this space’). Though, yeah, like literally every Wire lyric written post 1996, it’s just as likely to be about Richey.
Sean’s drumming though? More proof that he is absolutely one of the greatest rock drummers of the past 30 years.
I walk between the dividing lines I dance around the exit signs I hate the world more than I hate myself I can’t pretend that it’s a cry for help
Tattered manifestos litter the mind Diplomatic plans ravaged by time It never really was the truth or lies We just gave up and said our goodbyes
So hold me – uh! – hold me – oof! – hold me – ow! – like a heaven, I want some – bam! – faith and – good God! – wanna be forgiven, I wanna – YOW! – feel your – DOCTOR!! – divine interveeeeeeeeeeeeention.
Yeah, everyone hates this song. JDB didn’t like the cheesy ‘Whoah-uh-woah!’ additions to the chorus, Sean didn’t like how he never actually laid down any new drumming for the song and it was instead backed by looped recordings of tracks he’d added to different songs, Nicky probably hates it, because he must be sick of writing songs that are essentially just about being the Manic Street Preachers by now, surely??
Well, sod the lot of them, I don’t care, Hold Me… is an absolute banger, and one of the best songs the band have released in the past decade. Yes, it’s cheesy, yes, it’s unashamedly sentimental and, yes, it couldn’t be more geared towards mainstream success if it featured Logan and Jake Paul* on backing vocals. But, fuck all y’all, it’s absolutely magic! Get out of my face and stick your hands in the motherfucking air!!
(*I have decided not to update the reference I made in 2021, as the Paul brothers remain the most recent celebrities I’ve heard. If you are aware of anyone who has become famous in the last 5 years then please let me know in the comments. The only person I can remember hearing about in the last five years is Lucy Letby and, I dunno, doesn’t seem appropriate)
Plus, you guys realise this is on ‘Resistance is fucking Futile‘, the blandest of the ‘Trilogy of Bland’, yeah? Maybe just be thankful that album isn’t a complete wash.
We put our bodies on the line Built a mountain we could never climb How could four become so strong Yet break and leave too soon, too soon
Yeah, yeah, it’s both a song about
a) being in the Manics, and
b) Richey
so mark those down.
Another ‘TUVL’ track, and like Diapause, another track I could never imagine naming amongst the band’s greatest when I’d listened to the album even a hundred times back in 2021. One of the things that mark ‘TUVL’ out as likely the highlight of the ‘Trilogy of Bland’ is how its strengths don’t really lie in its banging tunes, infectious melodies and sweeping choruses, but in far more subtle songs that take far longer to really blossom in your subconscious. Still Snowing in Sapparo opens the album as it intends to go on, with a incredibly reserved and underplayed slow epic that makes even The Everlasting sound like Slash ‘n’ Burn in terms of album intros that go off with a bang. In terms of the band writing weeb songs about how much they love Japan, it sounds like they took another shot at (I Miss) The Tokyo Skyline and blasted it out of the park, and to be honest the attempt at glacial and elegiac pop works a lot better than a lot of the same ambitions on ‘Lifeblood’.
To be clear though: there are some stinkers on that album (on both of those albums!) that prevent it from ever being considered one of the band’s best (or even for parole from the ‘Bland Asylum’) but the highs can be outstanding.
Drugs come out of boredom, babe UN exports it everyday Their armies feed the ghetto lame Government approve it just the same
Another Invented Disease seems to split fan opinion, with some people (correctly) recognising that it’s one of the album’s greatest examples of straightforward but nonetheless euphoric cock rock, and some people (incorrectly) considering it one of the record’s least memorable cuts, and one of the first to go if you were to consider trimming the albums 54’806 minute runtime.
Here’s the thing: I was a Guns N’ Roses fan before I was a Manics fan*. Maybe you’re only vaguely aware of G’N’F’n’R, maybe you would recognise Funko Pops of Axl Rose and Slash, and have more than once angrily told your aunty that she needs to go home soundtracked by Sweet Child of Mine at a family wedding, and you don’t really appreciate how fucking amazing they were. You might categorise them in your brain with the Aerosmiths, Bon Jovis and Def Leppards of this world- bands that you’re pretty sure were a big thing on the radio back in the 80s but are, in all seriousness, really shit. It might be difficult to appreciate almost 40 years later just what an absolute heavy metal/punk/rock behemoth the band were, and what an electric shock to the entire world of music their 1987 debut (which actually did sell the Manics’ coveted 16 million copies) ‘Appetite for Destruction’ was.
God I would fuck every single one of them SO hard…
(*I think… I’m pretty sure… Listen, young ‘uns, you will eventually get to an age where your brain no longer considers it top priority to remember in what order you liked musical artists. It’s the stage before forgetting which artists you like, then forgetting if you actually like art at all, then if you like anything, then you will forget all of your friends and family and all of the memories you’ve spent a lifetime accumulating. Then you die. Alone. Don’t forget to hit ‘subscribe’!)
Guns N’ Ross had the look, they had the talent, their transporting of punk ideals and anger to 80s hair metal tropes was revolutionary and, fuck me, they rocked hard. They were so similar to the Manics in so many ways that there’s a reason why the band based so many of their early ambitions on their success. Yes, in terms of the ‘profound/dumb’ dynamic that the Manics pushed especially hard on their debut album, G’N’F’n’R were far more centred towards the latter, and there was always a nasty ‘Turn around bitch I’ve got a use for you‘ underpinning to their music, but they were never at the Mötley Crüe level of piggish ignorance. Richey himself pointed out how Paradise Citymay contain the dumb-as-a-dirty-dingo chorus of “Take me down to the Paradise City/Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty”, but also has the brilliant couplet “Captain America’s been torn apart/Now he’s a court jester with a broken heart”. The band always chose their moments to be profound alongside the profane. Oh, and there’s a referees’ whistle in that song. Richey didn’t mention that, but I felt it important to note.
Early on, pre-career, the Manics’ influences were all NME approved, home recorded, tinny sounding, often fey indie like Big Flame, June Brides, and Talulah Gosh, while being especially influenced by the politics of McCarthy. Sean, with his treasured copy of ‘I Am a Wallet‘, was very happy. Then, JDB heard ‘Appetite for Destruction’. In the summer of 1988, with Nicky and Richey off at university, JDB taught himself to play the whole album on guitar. Sean was not happy: “I said it’s just cock rock shite and I don’t want anything to do with it… Even to this day, I don’t listen to those albums by choice“. However, when Nicky and Richey returned on break from university to discover their friend had become a Rock God, they agreed that this should be the band’s direction, and Sean’s objections were outvoted. Sean then smashed his cousin JDB’s ‘Appetite for Destruction’ LP in anger.
So, yeah, I love Another Invented Disease because it sounds like Guns N’ Roses. If you’re a Manics fan, you are officially not allowed to ever make jokes about Guns N’ Roses. You don’t have to like the band, but respect that shit.
And, yeah, the lyrics on Disease… are standard early Manics ‘we live in a society’ fare, with the AIDS acronym of the song’s title perhaps lending far too much credence to the conspiracy theory that the disease was invented by the US government, but you know what? You can barely understand a fucking word JDB says in this song, so it really doesn’t matter! Especially when the few times he becomes legible are to deliver gorgeous lines like “Daylight forces sunshine out of me/I need to feel alone among the weeds”.
Must have had him at my mercy Drown that poor thing put it out of its misery Condemn it to its future deny its history, deny its history
Listen, I might give Nicky Wire the occasional good natured shit for his lyrics- and the guy is always dangerously capable of dropping the odd absolute stinker of a line (did I ever mention that line about refugees?)- but it’s just banter! I don’t think it’s too controversial an opinion to believe Richey was the more talented lyricist, which Wire himself would admit, but Nicky was (is?) still capable of multi-layered gorgeousness like Ready for Drowning when he’s not mucking about.
Right, are you paying attention at the back? The lyric begins with referencing an apparent true story of Wire being in a taxi in around 1995 and being asked by the driver about the disappearance of some local rock star they’d read about in the news, not realising they were talking about Richey Edwards to his (former??) bandmate. So that’s it, right? Richey’s abandoned car was found near the Severn Bridge after his disappearance, which was a ‘popular’* suicide spot, so Wire is trying to convince himself that diving into the cold water of the River Severn was not how the existence of his best friend ended, and maybe also that he shouldn’t take the option himself, no matter how tempting it might be.
R.S. Thomas
(*’popular’ really doesn’t feel like the right word in this context…)
But wait! Lyrical affinity is also brought to the story of the Welsh town of Capel Celyn, which was forcibly abandoned and flooded in 1965 in order to create a reservoir in the Tryweryn Valley to ensure a decent water supply to the city of Liverpool. So that’s it, yeah? It’s about Richey’s disappearance, and also of the Welsh often being treated as second class citizens only to prop up the ruling English? Perhaps Richey’s fate was just to be drowned and disappeared to provide fodder for the English tabloids?
But Wait! This is also tied into wider themes of Welsh identity (‘Condemn it to its future/Deny its history’) and the forcible suppression of it throughout history. So that’s it, yeah? It’s about Richey’s disappearance, linked with the suppression of Welsh identity and culture that has lead to them historically being treated as subordinates to the ruling class?
BUT WAIT!! You’ve also got to consider how all of this all relates to the band themselves in 1998 and…
You know what? There’s far too much going on here to cover all the topics, but it’s easily one of Wire’s greatest lyrics. Musically, it more than stands up, with a gorgeous organ line contributing to a wonderful sonic evocation of water. Also, I think the Richard Burton “I will bring the whole unholy edifice down on their unworthy heads” line might be my favourite ever Manics vocal sample, which is high praise indeed! I even named a blog post after it, in one of my usual references that nobody is going to get.
This country pisses debris Like ugly people made pretty Underneath cheap make-up Deformed, disguised mind decay Buy, consume, get more credit Learn to serve a life sentence here Style yourself in sterility
I have long adored this song, it not only sounds unlike anything close to the music the band were making at the time, but it is an early example of the band using b-sides (this to the #41 song) to show a different side of themselves and exhibit songs that absolutely wouldn’t fit anywhere else.
R.P. McMurphy (the protagonist of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but good luck finding many mentions of the character in a particularly dense lyric) is an acoustic ballad from the time when you’d assume even the suggestion of such a thing would make each band member’s head explode in a shower of Communist red glitter. The whole song is just JDB, his (poorly recorded, if we’re being honest) acoustic guitar, a tiny hint of electric guitars on the chorus, and a tambourine. It’s rare even to this day for the band to release such slight, naked music. It’s fucking extremely rare for their songs to feature a wordless chorus like R.P‘s ‘Na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na’! I can’t think of another wordless Manics’ chorus right now, but I’ll get back to you. R.P… is gorgeous, delicate, vulnerable and emotional, plus it’s lyrics are about capitalism driving alienation and despair, which is pretty much the entirety of my bag, frankly.
The tapping pain of madness Running through the veins We may write in English But our truth remains in Wales
It’s been 13 years, and I’m really starting to think the ‘Rewind the Film’ album will never click with me. I appreciate it, I get what they were going for with something far more stripped back and reserved than anything than ever done before, and in truth they probably achieved that. It’s the band’s one ‘acoustic’ album, and far more artistically interesting than anything in the ‘Trilogy of Bland’, but I don’t think it’s a particularly great album, one that I rarely go back to and one with very few real highlights. I think there are only a few artists that can successfully pull off a morose mood piece like ‘Rewind the Film’. For the Manics, a band so centred around passion and congregation, it can often sound like they’re castrating themselves to try and reach the high notes of a song nobody wants to hear. But I at least understand the concept, I understand the links between it and the next year’s (seriously? A fucking million times better) ‘Futurology’, and I can appreciate how well constructed so much of the album is. It just isn’t very good. Sean apparently said that the whole project was “Like doing an ambitious b-side record“, which… yeah… Actual b-side record ‘Lipstick Traces’ is about ten times better, by the BTW,
Show Me the Wonder though, will be ‘RTF’s one entry on this list, and is an absolute… wonder (damnit, Alex, you have a thesaurus right there). There are few songs in the band’s repertoire so damn unashamedly positive and upbeat, and the way JDB delivers the chorus of ‘Show me the wonder/I…. have… seen… the birth. Place of the U-ni-veeeerse’ sends sparkles of pure joy crackling up your spine. Everything about the song is just lovely, from the 70s AOR influenced sound that was the band going for Elvis in Vegas vibes, to the music video living up to the gimmick of the album by featuring the band playing the song in a 1970s working man’s club, which you imagine has always been one of the band’s impossible dreams.
The video also contains a momentous moment in Manic Street Preachers history.
Liposuction for your bad mouth boy Cut out your tongue, effigies are sold Words discoloured, bow to the bland Heal yourself with sinner’s salt Doctors arrested for euthanasia Kill smokers through blind vanity If you’re fat don’t get ill Europe’s gravestone carved in plastic P.C. she says inoculate, hallucinate, beware Shakespeare Bring fresh air, king cigarette snuffed out by her midgets, by her midgets
Fuck me, mate, you think you’ve got ‘The Holy Bible’s lyrical concerns near enough figured out, they hit you with a “King cigarette snuffed out by her midgets, by her midgets” right near the end. Also, lads, ‘midgets‘?? Not very PC.
I have struggled with PCP for more than 30 years now. The song itself is a banger, even if the chorus doesn’t hit as hard as some of the band’s/album’s best, and the complete about-face from the song’s infectious guitar riff intro into more straight punk around ten seconds in, while a great trick, kind of tricks you into expecting a far better song. And on The Holy freaking Bible?? Isn’t it just a silly punk dick around to close an album of incisive musical and emotional extremes. Coming straight after the #50 song, to this day the most extreme and punishing slab of anti-fun the band have ever produced, PCP is a more carefree and jolly fuck about to close the album on something approaching a high. It was also a sneaky song to put on a double A side for the album’s first release: “Don’t worry! The album’s full of punk bangers like this!!”. Liars.
The lyrics are also… ‘PC gone mad’…? Heavily influenced by a February 1994 article in ‘Living Marxism’ magazine, rather than a Richard Littlejohn article, but such free speech absolutism and mid 90’s cancel culture complaints never sat well with me. It’s the most lyrically awkward track on the record, and its concerns about correct speech being considered mroe important than structural issues just seems a bit… basic when compared to the other questions the record asks.
“I didn’t know PCP was a drug. I thought it was the Portuguese Communist Party, because when we had been to Portugal I bought one of their badges, but he said it’s got fuck all to do with that.
I remember looking at it on paper when he did one of the original drafts and it just seemed like a lot of interesting words. Maybe too many words”
It is, however, also a shitload of fun. And the lyrics – while never risking a complete challenge to your whole social and political outlook – are pretty funny. It’s an end of album piss up, it’s the one ‘HB’ song guaranteed to put a grin on your face, and ensures the greatest album of all time ends on a euphoric “Designer amnesi-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-iac!”.
Empty arms and naked heart Violence, a sad truth followed with a Table for two, such a sweet delight Whispers, “I love you, my darling” tonight
Seriously, ignore the title, ignore the lyrical allusions to horrific domestic abuse, ignore the fact that this is obviously the band’s most blatant tribute to their longstanding Nirvana appreciation (Nicky will say Nobody Loved You, because… aye…? What…?) and just trust me that She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach is an absolute gig-destroying banger. It bops, it fucks, it grinds, it finishes after just over two minutes and leaves you breathless. Just like – yes – your mum.
Perhaps the darkest lyrical conceit on the ‘JFPL’ album, maybe even a little ridiculously so. But while ‘The Holy Bible’ was all about intensifying and nakedly representing the horror and darkness in the lyrics, this stadium rock bouncer is more evidence of how more concerned the band were on ‘JFPL’ in crafting interesting and unpredictable musical backings to the lyrics.
But blah blah blah, who cares? That fucking chorus, yeah? Coupled with Sean’s drumming? Lordy-loo, is it wrong to get an erection to this song? I mean… It’s apparently based on a true story of someone Richey met in his psychiatric hospital… so… yeah… probably not OK…
Nat West, Nat West-Barclays Midlands-Lloyds Black horse apocalypse Death sanitised through credit
Prosperity, exports for Pol Pot Prosperity, Mein Kampf for Beginners
Boo.
Yah.
The band’s 1992 debut album was one of the most astonishingly contrarian rock records of the 1990s. It was a speed record in an ecstacy era. An attempt to mix the glam punk excesses of G’N’F’n’R with the anger and political acumen of Public Enemy. It was released in a country still beaming from the second summer of love and attempting to break a music industry being overtaken by grunge. Never has such ridiculously ambitious guaranteed failure sounded so life affirming. “We are the Manics”, their debut said, “We kind of suck at everything but you’re going to love us for the rest of time”. Good call, Manics.
And Nat West – Barclays – Midlands – Lloyds is an almost laughably typical example of what this insane band of working class Welshmen dressed like Mötley Crüe in an Inspiral Carpets era were all about. The title is ridiculously overelaborate; the music could fit onto Poison’s ‘Look What the Cat Dragged In’ but the lyrics are hard left agitprop; the song’s about the immoral practices of the banking sector which nobody gave a shit about at the time but, I dunno, might become a big deal quite soon; and it’s hooks, hooks, hooks as the band prove they’re the only people brave/insane enough to marry a irresistible rock song with lyrics referencing both Pol Pot and ‘Main Kampf’.
Seriously, if you didn’t fall immediately in love with this band then that has to be a severe mental issue…
Bewildered but then Then so uncomplicated All these feelings Not fully created
Gosh, wasn’t being a kid just great? Asks Nicky Wire, for about the 562nd time. Another Manics b-side that not only ranks among their best songs but is vastly superior to the single it’s backing, in this case ‘Know Your Enemy’s Ocean Spray. Ocean Spray is also Sir Not Appearing On This List, by the way. I’m sorry. I know, I know it’s the first lyric that JDB wrote, and that it’s about his mother dying of cancer and… Shut up, alright? You’re making me feel cruel!
Now, baby, what you done to your hair? Is it just the same time of year When you think that you don’t really care? Now, baby, what have you done to your hair?
Do-noo-NERE-da-do-do-diddle-oo…
Screw the lot of you, this song is an absolute beast! An all timer of a classic guitar lick, a killer chorus, melodies for days… What else do you want in a Manics’ song?? If you don’t like this song I will find you and I will cut you. Oh, what’s that, you only like shite music? The Foo Fighters are right there, you’re already well pandered for!
Speaking of pandering, this might be the worst offender on the the most pandery of albums (aside from maybe Indian Summer‘s pretty pathetic attempt to ape the #4 song on this list). But it’s lovely pandering! The lyrics give thinly veiled shout outs to the Legacy Fans, but also opening the gates to any new fans who might want to join, as long as they all “Wear your love like it was made of hate”. Yes, I know, it might be the corniest and cheesiest song they’ve ever done, but you’ve got to wear your heart on your sleeve sometimes when you’re telling all your community how blessed they are.
We blur into images of state coercion Classified machines die misunderstood City reflections pour out misery We don’t count ’cause we hate
Rain down alienation Leave this country Leave this country Rain down alienation Leave this country Leave it
Despair seeps through and cuts our eyes Unified collapse of everything inside We understand but can’t accept You are not dead ’cause we hate
Rain down alienation Leave this country Leave this country Rain down alienation Leave this country Leave it
Holy shit, people, this song, those lyrics, that video, this attitude, this vibe this freaking musical revolution!
Love’s Sweet Exile may not be the greatest song in the world on paper. It’s an extremely straightforward hair metal tribute that largely aims for football crowd chanting rather than an arresting melody, and of the bunch of singles they released to trail their spectacularly unorthodox debut record, it’s probably near the bottom, quality wise.
But, fuck me, this is what the Manics were in 1992! A mission statement to all the impressionable young revolutionaries who might be hearing the band for the first time. And they understood the assignment, delivering a brash and confrontational mix of basic and unfashionable 80s rock (Nirvana had released ‘Nevermind’ about a month before Love’s Sweet Exile came out, to absolutely kill off the relevance of all their musical influences) and captivating social commentary that you could only think was utterly ridiculous or absolute fucking genius! The video was a dangerous and alluring introduction into the cult that the band already knew would amass around them, a psycho-sexual minefield where gender norms are discarded and we’re promised entry into a gang where we can be angry and sexy!
I know, in 2026 this is hardly Earth shattering stuff, and let’s not pretend that, at the end of the day, the band weren’t just four cis white men with an occasionally (traditionally) feminine sense of style. But, in the early 90’s, this really was a blistering shot through rock music’s inherent toxic masculinity. The band may have been boring old default characters in terms of identity, but his was no queerbaiting or virtue signalling. They were simply letting us know that, hey, this is our gang, and everyone’s invited. By the way, some of you will get a bit too obsessed, and still be writing about this dumb fucking song more than thirty years from now.
Killed God blood soiled unclean again Killed God blood soiled skin dead again Again, everywhere again
‘Everything Must Go‘ is a triumphant and anthemic celebration of the band’s continued existence. The songs are joy joyously big when the previous record was the sound of a band squealing their last breaths while stuck in a rapidly shrinking coffin. It’s easy, 30 years later, to look at the album as the band confidently announcing their second phase without Richey, but the band were in no way accepting that. Recorded less than a year after Richey’s disappearance, and released only 18 months after, there was still a belief amongst the band that a new record might actually convince their estranged friend to reappear. If they became the biggest band in the country, which was always the plan, surely Richey would want to be included?? They fulfilled the first part at least.
Removables was one of the five Richey lyrics that the band had begun to formulate while their absent co-lyricist could hear, so felt confident enough to include on the album. Richey himself might have dreamed about an album that was “Pantera meets Nine Inch Nails meets Screamadelica”, the album that ‘EMG’ would become was already well on its way while Richey was with the group. The brooding, menacing Removables is probably the closest the band get on the album to circling ‘THB’s rancid black heart again, but the groove and sardonic swing still chimes with the wider commercialism of the record. And as Simon Price so wonderfully points out, isn’t the chorus of “All removables, all transitory/All removables, passing always” just Richeyspeak for ‘Everything Must Go’?
To be morally good Are we ready to love? A devil pretending to be a god Love’s written on paper, and paper burns Eternity is not sunrise
‘JFPL’s hidden track, often not featured on subsequent/international prints of the album and not played live. It screeches into view a few minutes after William’s Last Words(#63 5 years ago) had seemingly (and very intentionally) laid Richey to rest with an uncharacteristically heartfelt and emotive lyrical eulogy. One that I veer between being impossibly moved by and considering uncomfortably exploitative. William’s Last Words‘ lyrics were actually compiled from a much larger play that Richey had written and cobbled them together on the album’s closer so that they resemble… a suicide note…
There’s no getting around what the lyrics sound like – “Goodnight my sweetheart/Until we leave tonight hold me in your arms/Wish me some luck as you wave goodbye to me/You’re the best friends I ever had” – a final goodbye from Richey to his bandmates (and fans), that the rest of the band completely fucking made up! Nicky Wire himself has insisted that the song doesn’t actually represent Richey’s final words. So… why present the song as if it were?? The band edited out lines from a much bigger lyric, took them out of context and presented them at the album’s (official) finale, knowing exactly how they would be read. The song’s fucking gorgeous, and conceptually a perfect closer to the album. But… I can’t shake the horrible feeling that the band created a suicide note that was never intended to exist, just for an emotionally charged and effective album closer. I’m sorry, and I don’t want to intrude in on or make assumptions about people’s grief, but doesn’t this all feel… gross…?/
You’re left to grapple with these ethics for a few minutes after William’s Last Words finishes, before in peak late 90’s style the ‘hidden track’ Bag Lady barges in with the force of a freight train. Spiky, angry, melodically infectious, one of the album’s absolute highlights, and a post punk mini masterpiece. Who cares about being morally good? I’m ready to love.
I live to fall asleep Regenerate and sin Skin so tense gives in I’ve lived enough to kill
Classic, latter Nicky Wire extremely capable and nice sounding lyrics. About liking sleep, which is relatable, right? I kinda fell in love with this band for their ability to interpret thoughts a bit deeper than that, but who doesn’t like sleep?? Ammi right, lads?? You slay at sleep, Nicky, you absolute slumbersome king!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, but fuck me that melody. All of those melodies! I Live to Fall Asleep is simply one of the most gorgeous sounding pieces of pop music human life has yet achieved. I just want to open up the carcass of this song and snuggle up within its ribcage to protect me from the cold outside.
All of my sins Are attempts to fill the voids All of my voids They are filled with sin
Perhaps no other song sums of the general vibe of the band’s divisive but commercially mastodonian fifth album. The band were tired of being tired, bored of being bored, fucked with being fucked and, lyrically and sonically, happy being sad. Which is fine. It’s difficult to imagine what the mindset was of a band who had recently achieved all the success they’d always craved/promised, but only after their ‘Minister of Propaganda’ and chief creative influence (and the guy who made most of those promises) had noped out of the whole operation. A certain ennui might creep in, I dunno.
The tone has never been my issue with ‘TIMTTMY’. The issue is that so many of the songs simply aren’t very good. Songs like I’m Not Working and- holy mother of God- S.Y.M.Mdive far too deeply into the ennui and come out as slithering murmurs the other side. Why can’t you be more like your brother, My Little Empire?? You might have been part of a beautifully understated piece of art that would legitimately stand up as a brave artistic triumph! Five million copies sold??? PAH! Some of your older fans don’t like the direction very much!! You pig dogs make me sick!
Empire… is absolutely incredible. One of JDB’s most brilliant guitar lines – like if Slash released the ‘Pink Moon’ instead of Nick Drake – which provides the ballast for a gorgeously brooding masterpiece. Nirvana’s Dumb is very much present at the feast, but Empire… is easily enough to stand alongside (and even eclipse…?) the ‘In Utero’ highlight rather than merely pay tribute. Sequenced perfectly on the album at track six to signal the change in pace from the record’s early bangers to its more experimental (let’s face it, often unsuccessfully so) and morose second half.
Wreckage inside all that’s real Another bought product, no reality Passive consumers with patrolled desires Mindless countdown to retirement
I am nothing and should be everything! Heart beats like a refuge machine! They want a piece of your skin, pump it safer than a suicide! I accuse ‘istory, y’I y’accuse!
Listen, I can’t really explain why I love this song so much, maybe because it again slides into ‘Best Song G N’R Never Did’ contention. Maybe it’s the (near) Karl Marx quote. Or maybe just because it’s the seventeenth track on their debut album, so you know that only the most dedicated fans will ever properly appreciate it. Pfff, look at these pathetic casuals, bet they dropped out around track 12, So Dead, didn’t they?
And life can be as important as death But so mediocre when there’s no air, no light, and no hope Prejudice burns brighter when it’s all we have to burn The world lances youth’s lamb-like winter, winter
Aw, we’ve had some fun recently, haven’t we? We’ve had a nice chat about refugee machines, Slash playing Nick Drake and the pampering of Manics fans. But fun time is over now, as we return to the astonishing aural heart of darkness that is ‘The Holy Bible’. The bracing Mausoleum is one of two songs on the record hugely inspired by the band’s sobering visit to a couple of former concentration camps during their 1993 tour. The other one is coming up very soon. Brace yourself. That other Holocaust ditty is far more graphic and literal, and Mausoleum only really touches on the mid 20th century’s low point of humanity in passing (humanity just couldn’t stop hitting these low points in the Victorian era, but we don’t like to talk about that because generally we were the Nazis) . Its only real literal reference is the “No birds” chorus, referencing the lack of life the band said was their main takeaway from the visit- and also originally the track’s title. The song instead builds on the wider album’s theme of the Earth being so obviously doomed because of humanity’s inherent cruelty, that the whole planet is simply a mausoleum of the human race’s worst impulses floating through space.
Yeah, I know, but what do you expect after you spend your summer holiday in Dachau? Which was Sean’s idea!
Musically, it might be one of the closest to a traditional hard rock song on the record, and wouldn’t sound that out of place on a Metallica album (apart from ‘…And Justice for All’, of course, where it would stand out due to the production not being complete balls)
But that’s all very relative, and Metallica wouldn’t have the ingenuity to sprinkle the song with heart stopping pace changes, JG Ballard samples and spine chilling guitar effects. Oh, and a chorus that seems to last about 42 minutes (in a good way).
One more time! We don’t even get to the ‘No birds’ bit here…
I’m still not sure I can listen to it and rate it objectively. Back in 1998, this felt like such a betrayal to me. It felt like the album where The Manics officially stopped being The Manics, at least as us fans understood them. Sure, their dress code was already officially ‘fucking dull’ on their previous album ‘Everything Must Go’, but they were in mourning! And, the songs were so good that they finally became the biggest rock band in the country that they’d always promised they’d be! But this is what they do when they finally have the ears of millions of people?? This is what you do with eternity?? A record that’s half the most shameless (and largely inoffensive) grasps at mainstream success, and half low tempo mood pieces heavily influenced by latter day Genesis?? That, incredibly, panders enough to Radio 2 and ITV to sell five freaking million copies?? That’s it, they’re not ours anymore! The normies have taken them!! And that’s what you’re wearing now?? That’s even more fucking dull than last time!!
shit, is this a Christian Rock album? Bollocks, bet they’re all looking for Jesus on that beach, aren’t they? Bunch of fucking nonces…
Even now, as a fat and dull old man – and as much as I try to quieten that ever banging drum in my head that’s forever me as a 90’s teenager – I still don’t think ‘TIMTTMY’ is a great album. I remember when I went to see the band tour the album for its 20th anniversary and – despite it often being the opposite case – the album might have gone down in my adult estimation seeing it performed live. One of the Manics’ most powerful weapons has always been there ability to pop a live crowd, to write songs that naturally appeal to their already established communal spirit. With a few exceptions, ‘TIMTTMY’ too often leans away from this talent and too often gives us… dirges… (you have never truly questioned your entire existence until you have stood up watching S.Y.M.M being performed live in its entirety. Could have sworn that song was 75 minutes long…) There are far too many weak songs, there are far too many deathly dull songs, and I still think the absolute kindest thing you can say about the album as a whole (apart from noting the handful of undeniable highpoints) is that it’s a failed experiment.
But, hey, at least it was kind of an experiment- though I’m still not sure the main risk taken was worth losing their fanbase over. It was their own New Labour: ditching the working class in order to grasp at more comfortable acceptance, only to later turn around and realise they no longer had any supporters left
But the high points are very high. You’re Tender and You’re Tired is one of the most successful attempts of writing to the record’s general themes of depression and despondence, while not sacrificing the band’s natural way with a killer melody and a banging chorus. It’s also a pretty stunning presentation of James Dean Bradfield’s singing voice. Before ‘TIMTTMY’ we all already knew what a fantastic frontman he was, but with the added space allowed to him with Wire’s more ‘conventional’ lyrical pentameters and the musical sparseness, we really started to appreciate what an astonishing singer he was. The delivery of the lines “Rebuild the void with flowers/Sad-eyed destruction built around sand and sea/Yes you can build yourseeeelf around/Build yourself around me, yourself around me-ee-he-he!” is a legitimately spine tingling example of what magic can be achieved with a perfect Nicky Wire lyric and a spotless JDB vocal. It’s that moment that’s most in my head when the song makes the biggest jump in places since 2021.
They hired a professional whistler though? I mean, really…?
Arbeit macht frei Transports of invalids Hartheim Castle breathes us in In block 5 we worship malaria Lagerstrasse, poplar trees Beauty lost, dignity gone Rascher surveys us butcher bacteria
OK, so this it the other… You know what? You’re smart enough to work that out.
Is there another band in history whose back catalogue contains disparate swings as big as that between the dumb-as-dogs’ cock hair metal delirium of Methadone Pretty, the perfectly attuned MOR of You;’re Tender and You’re Tired, the crushing melodic beauty of I Live to Fall Asleep, and the devastatingly malicious art rock of The Intense Humming of Evil? Quite unlike any other song in the band’s back catalogue. Honestly? Unlike anything in anyone’s back catalogue. The Joy Division influence is maybe the most prominent – especially Exercise One – but Sean’s looped drum samples create a far more disconcerting experience. I could have just have easily put this song towards the top of this list as I could have left it out completely. There’s an argument to be made that Intense… might be the band’s artistic high point. It’s not quite a rock song, not quite industrial despite it beginning underpinned by the slow and ominous metallic chimes of machinery, and it certainly isn’t a mid-paced ballad… It’s kind of like a poem… with a melody… what would you call that…?
‘THB’ is an infamously distressing and disturbing album, and Intense… serves as its particularly distressing and disturbing summit. A song about the Holocaust is never likely to work well. What? Are you going to argue that it was generally a bad vibe and that the Nazis were pretty uncool? Geez, so glad I came to your TED Talk, what sacred cow are you planning to slay next? The Manics though, never actually pass judgement on one of the worst ever crimes against humanity, they simply present the horror. The song is seemingly told from the perspective of someone unfathomably ambivalent* toward the atrocities they describe enveloping them, and so we’re just given a unfeeling and factual description of the inhumanity as chillingly apathetic as the Hoss family cheerfully going about their daily business in ‘Zone of Interest**’. The ‘chorus’ of “6 million screaming souls/Maybe misery – maybe nothing at all/Lives that wouldn’t have changed a thing/Never counted – never mattered – never be” confronts the listener with the dispassionate retort to their inherent humanity (and chiming nicely with the album’s general nihilism). Do these people deserve to be treated with dignity? Do any of us??
(*in a rare example of internal dispute over lyrics, JDB sent the original draft back and deemed it not judgemental enough, saying later that “You can’t be ambivalent towards the Holocaust”. So, yeah, if the song makes you feel a bit queasy, blame James
**I’d actually put that Jonathan Glazer work of genius as the closest artistic similarity to Intense…)
I’ve seen it argued that the way the song’s guitars kick in and the tempo rises ever so slightly with the line ‘Churchill no different/Wish the workers bled to a machine’ signifies that:
As we’re told of Churchill’s true desires though, something happens: we reject. The guitar comes to the forefront and begins to overpower the rhythm section. We can escape. We are the future train drivers and camp guards. We can escape. We are those poor souls entering the chambers. We can escape. The guitar swells and the impossibility of it all fades away.
…but I personally think this is looking too much for a passing whiff of momentary positivity in a song that actually contains none. I have always read the introduction of the guitar line as the song turning around and facing the listener, empathising how this is not just a Nazi problem, this is a problem that humanity itself has to reckon with. There are no good guys here, and all the Holocaust proved was that the intense humming of evil lies occasionally dormant in the very soul of all humans. Who’s responsible? You fucking are.
Sorry about that, Hippo Bored Alone was being a bit inappropriate given the context. But, like I said, she bloody loves a reference.
Then… at the songs end… we don’t get a clear conclusion… It simply grinds to a halt… slowly into silence… as the gas is released…
Were we the Kinnock factor? Am I talking private sector? Do I think I’m Shaun William Ryder? Or my former friend whose now undercover?
Yeah, alright, this’ll do nicely, I guess.
am I talking private sector?
“At the start, we never went around wearing Welsh credentials. Richey was really paranoid about ever coming across as Welsh. He always called it the Neil Kinnock Factor: ‘Turn the lights out!’ I’ve become more conscious of it lately”
The secondary track to the single that’s finished #2, in perhaps one of the greatest A/B-side partnerships since Prince had the audacity to partner If I was Your Girlfriend with Shockadelica back in ’87. The band’s other b-side for the single, Montana/Autumn/78,is also a bit of a lowkey banger. Prologue to History was actually a shock to hear for the first time because of how radically different it was from the a-side, and the whole ‘TIMTTMY’ sound. Shit, it’s radically different from pretty much anything the band has done up to this day. The namechecking of Shaun Ryder was obviously deliberate, as the song sounds like some sort of dangerously deranged situationist take on Step On. You’re twisting my Dyson, man. It is absolutely in the conversation regarding the band’s greatest b-sides (although this list proves scientifically that it’s actually the 8th, if you were wondering) and is a very rare example of the band using b-sides in the correct way – i.e. to experiment with sounds and ideas that would sound ridiculously out of place on the surrounding album.
And ridiculously out of place it did sound when the band decided to retcon the ‘TIMTTMY’ album on its 2018 re-issue by placing the track at number 11 instead of Nobody Loved You(Sir Not Appearing On This List, which demoted to a ‘hidden’ track at the end of the album). Playing around with old albums’ tracklists when they’re reissued is something of a fetish for the band, they have previous in replacing Underdogswhen they rereleased ‘SATT’ in 2017′, and fucked around with the ‘KYE’ tracklist so much in 2022 that they turned it into a double album with different names. Let’s be honest: the band have been fans of self-sabotage since they started.
Now, here’s the thing, I have absolutely no issue with artists going back and fiddling with their previous works- I mean, fuck, please take the hideous Underdogs away from me! I don’t believe a piece of art being released commercially is necessarily the gates of creativity closing. It’s an artist’s work and why should we put artificial, commerce dictated barrier to that work improving? I wish more bands would take Car Seat Headrest‘s lead and strive to improve previous releases they never felt were quite perfect- they could win Necessary Evil album of the year for Christ’s sake!! We can all at least agree that we dream of Metallica going back and rerecording ‘…And Justice for All’ with production that doesn’t sound like it was recorded in a slop tank, yes? Yes. Yes we can. Shall I shut up about ‘…And Justice for All’ now? Yes. yes I will.
But part of the charm of Prologue… is how massively contrasting it was to the sound of the band at the time, so sticking it on the actual album runs its significance, it ruins the album by having the whole flow and style walk into a wall and then fall off a cliff, and it ruins me for having to write this shit!!
Like I said though, great song. “He’s gone/But I’m no deserter”? Is this the one time when Nicky’s lyrics reveal anger at what Richey has put the band through?
But freedom of speech won’t feed my children Just brings heart disease and bootleg clothing Just brings heart disease and bootleg clothing Just brings heart disease and bootleg clothing Just brings heart disease and bootleg clothing
The wonderful, riotous ‘KYE’ closing track. Well… closing track on the original album, but the band will tell you that it was always supposed to be the fourth track on ‘Solidarity’… And it isn’t really the closing track on the original 2001 album, as the band love a bloody secret track, so the closing song is technically their cover of McCartney’sWe Are All Bourgeois Now… Although the band will tell you that McCarthey cover was always supposed to be the third track on the ‘Solidarity’ disk…
Leaving this incredible post-Richey gonzo politics highlight off the 2021 list was a huge mistake, and my utter shame lead to me writing on it at length when I named it the fifth best song of 2022, much of which I’ve reproduced below:
I struggled with this song for about twenty years, always recognising it as a banging tune but never completely understanding what it all meant past some catchy slogans and classic Nicky Wire bitching at other bands. Then I joined the Communist Party and increased my knowledge of the global superstructure. One of the most important tenets of the Communist Party is educating yourself on theories and history. Even stuff that isn’t supportive of Communist values, because you’re supposed to have the tools to explain why some positions are incorrect. Ask yourself, what other belief system encourages you to learn everything that you possibly can? That challenges you to find a more complete and sensical mindset amongst everything that has come before, knowing that you won’t? Anyway, now I recognise how Freedom of Speech… is one of the bravest and most coherent attack on the wider liberal mindset that a major artist has ever released. Shall we unpack?? Let’s unpack:
Liberty, sweet liberty Charitable respectability Then pacifism killed us all For all the tourists on the Berlin wall
We’re now taught by the US led imperial structure that ‘liberty’ is the most important thing, that what’s actually true freedom is allowing anybody to do whatever the hell they want, whenever they want. We now don’t consider freedom as being freedom from having to sell your body in order to survive as a human being, freedom to walk the Earth and cross between lands that don’t belong to another human, freedom to exist in a space without having to pay back all the money you’ve already sold your body for just to have a roof over your head. No, ‘freedom’ in this neoliberal dystopia is essentially being allowed to say the N word if you’re a white person. Now, we just pay to visit the Berlin Wall and celebrate the day that capitalism won, while celebrating the pacifism we show by not pushing back against the boot on our necks.
So we protest about human rights Worship obesity as our birthright But freedom of speech won’t feed my children Just brings heart disease and bootleg clothing
And this is what we’ve ended up fighting for! The ‘obesity’ that we celebrate isn’t meant in a completely literal sense, although no country on Earth celebrates the freedom inherent in being a fat fuck more than the USA. What we all want is the obesity of hoarded resources, endless consumer goods, bootleg clothing mimicking big brands that are all made by impoverished third world children to appease the West’s greed, and enough globalised fast food to ensure death through heart disease.
We love to kiss the Dalai Lama’s ass Because he is such a holy man Free to eat and buy anything Free to fuck from Paris to Beijing
Fuck the Dalai Lama. He isn’t fighting for true human rights, he isn’t interested in improving people’s conditions, he definitely has no interest in helping the common man. He is yearning for a time when himself and monks like him ruled over the commoners like royalty, and is rejecting the CPC’s belief that human beings aren’t more important than each other because of some bullshit religious hierarchy. That’s what you’re supporting. Well, probably not as supportive as you were a few years back, right? It’s getting harder for the Dalai Lama to spread word after that six figure wage from the CIA dried out. But, yeah at the same time, the Dalai Lama probably doesn’t give a shit, he gets to live the high life on other people’s expense (often taxpayers), so it’s likely the only thing he truly believes in is “Fuck you, got mine”. Like we’re all encouraged to.
Little boys with dangerous toys All bow down to the Beastie Boys
Yeah, fuck the Beastie Boys. RIP to that one who died though, sorry to hear about that.
Royalty, hereditery, unelected and becalmed Just like Stalin, just like Stalin Human and useless
We now simp for hereditary power. Even if we realise it’s not cool to obsess over the royal family anymore, we instead choose to lionise Prince Harry, because he possesses all of that hereditary goodness that we crave, but he knew what a failing brand the royal family was. He’s one of us! But also, importantly, absolutely better than us! His autobiography proved he’s a uneducated simpleton who loves war crimes, but we still stan! The Stalin line… I’m leaving that for a future article.
Bomb the Chinese Embassy The west is free, oh the west is free Laugh at the hammer and sickle It is antique, oh it is antique
The West is still engaging in propaganda designed to ‘bomb the Chinese embassy’. And the beliefs enshrined in the hammer and sickle are not antique, in fact it is socialism that is designed to supersede capitalism, which in itself is the archaic system well overdue an overhaul. Or perhaps people are referring to the primitive communism that human beings’ earliest ancestors practiced, proving that a sharing society that benefits all its members is actually human nature…?
And see the love in Richard Gere’s eyes
Yeah, fuck Richard Gere. RIP to that gerbil that died though, sorry to hear about that.
JS Pemberton saved our lives
Confederate soldier. Invented Coca Cola. Do you want heavy analysis on every line, or are you starting to get it now?
Do you see this though? Do you see?? Do you see how ALIVE you are after closely analysing the historical and socio-political meanings of a Manics lyric?? This is what I used to get from all of their songs!!
“It was so empowering playing it live, the hatred emanating from it. The complacency of the West felt like it was going to come home to roost at some point, and people didn’t want to hear that at all”
“Yeah? Whatever, Commie”, the West replied, “The way I see it we’re sitting pretty good right now, in March 2001, and I don’t see anything changing anytime soon”.
Pretend prayer Pretend care Makes everything seem so fair These perfect abattoirs These perfect actors These perfect abattoirs
Only a god can bruise Only a god can soothe Only a god reserves the right To forgive those that revile him Only a god can bruise Only a god can soothe Only a god reserves the right To forgive those that revile him
Ouch, pretty dark lyrics, no? Richey looking at the heart of acedia’s darkest hole and refusing to blink, know warra mean? Fucking abattoirs- abattoirs!- yeah? This will be one of those industrial, clanging screams of despair similar to ‘THB’s most antagonistic cuts, yeah?
However, the title track of ‘JFPL’ is an absolutely infectious stadium rock stomper. I know I’ve already complained about the lazy ‘Holy Bible pt.2’ narrative of ‘JFPL’, but come on, people! ‘JFPL’s title track would fit far more comfortably into the ‘EMG’ album’s presentation of snappy and concise, despairing lyrics tied to commercially accepted pop rock. Hell, if you’re willing to ignore the grim lyrical content, this absolute banger could have fit quite happily onto the previous album ‘SATT’s shameless rock pandering. And it would be one of the absolute best tracks on either of those albums. Lyrically, the theme of submitting yourself unquestionably to God seem to be in reference to Richey’s forced participation in the infamous 12 Step program while at the Priory, a program that has long been questioned for being so centred around religious submission. While the song’s name is inspired by Daniel Defoe’s ‘A Journal of the Plague Year‘, the ‘journal for plague lovers’ could be Richeyspeak for the 12 Step program or even the Bible itself. The Holy Bible, if you will.
The audio intro of someone scribbling notes (in some sort of journal, yeah??) is probably not needed.
You know what though? Get out of my face and stick your hands in the motherfucking air!!
Images of perfection, suntan and napalm Grenada, Haiti, Poland, Nicaragua Who shall we choose for our morality? I’m thinking right now of Hollywood tragedy Big Mac, smack, Phoenix, R., please smile y’all Cuba, Mexico can’t cauterise our discipline Your idols speak so much of the abyss Yet your morals only run as deep as the surface
Yeah, all one word.
Firstly, we have to address the elephant in the room here. The possessive form of ‘it’ is ‘its’. I honestly think I was in my thirties before I realised that. The Manics decided to put an apostrophe in a song title that otherwise didn’t respect the bourgeoisie rules of grammar enough to even include spaces between words (clearly inspired by McCarthy’s Antiamericancretin. And that apostrophe is grammatically incorrect! Is there something I’m not getting here? The title of this song ruined my understanding of grammar for literally twenty years. But is even that intended…??
No song more necessitates having the Genius explanation open on a separate tab than Whiteamerica… – this shit is dense! In three and a half minutes the song manages to reference the armed conflicts USA has been in since the second world war (at that point!); McDonald’s; the (spit) ‘War on Drugs’; River Phoenix; Tipper Gore; the hypocrisy behind America’s claims of democracy and equality; the Conservatives; the Republicans; the Democrats; the white supremacy underlying all of these parties; Compton; Harlem; the disposability of murdered black people and how little attention it receives (“Vital stats, how white was their skin?”); white privilege; the Zapruder film…
“Wait… is that guy having a wank…??”
And these are just the explicit references! Deeper reads reveal more allusions and commentary. Lyrically, it’s probably the one Manics’ song with the most going on, and you can return to it countless times and reveal little things and flashes of genius that still blow your mind on the 6’904’553rd listen. Apart from the line “Compton, Harlem, a pimp fucked a priest”, I challenge you to properly explain that one. Nicky Wire said at the time that the song was “not a completely anti-American song. It compares British imperialism to American consumerism”. Which… come on, Nicky, where is that read in the actual text? Show me the part that talks about British imperialism, OK? Nonsense. It’s a furiously anti-America song (at least white America) and when the band present their reasoning you even start to think… Yeah… maybe they have a point… Musically, the song is almost as arresting and outrageous as its (see that?) lyrics. JDB read the rapidfire lyrics and decided on an almost call and response musical style that was aiming for a “Demented version of ‘West Side Story’“, with similar comments on straining race relations as that musical’s America (“Life is alright in America/As long as your white in Americawz”. It all adds up to an absolutely banging art-punk revulsion, with an ever changing tempo and ridiculous energy. Oh and the way JDB screams ‘I’m here to serve the moral MA-JOR-ITY!’ is just… [chefskiss.jpg]
The song closes on the coda of “Fuck the Brady bill!/Fuck the Brady bill!/If God made man they say/Sam Colt made him equal”. The Brady Bill was a 1993 legislation that mandated background checks before issuing gun licenses and imposed a five day waiting period before you could buy a gun.
God, that country’s fucking weird. Anyway, the Brady Bill was a firearm legislation designed to make it harder to purchase weapons (in the most pathetically inconsequential way possible), the liberals love that shit, don’t they?
Well, a lot of ‘THB’ is an angry ‘fuck you’ to accepted liberal wisdom. To the Manics, the new gun laws would actually further suppress the country’s black citizens and were designed to solidify white supremacy: “It would disenfranchise the black community, who generally don’t have licences. The white rednecks in middle America do have licences, but statistics show they cause as much crime” (Nicky Wire to Melody Maker 1994/08/27). The closing line of ‘God created man/Sam Colt made them equal’, aside from being an actual slogan of the firearms company Colts, even seems to argue that the black communities need easy access to guns in order to equal the playing field. I mean, shit, this ain’t the kind of stuff you’re likely to read in the Guardian’s opinion pages.
Oh, and if you’re a fan of the band spitting in the face of accepted liberal consensus, you are going to love #26!
Find some meaning Donkeys weight cracking a spire Sweetness bent double Whole days making polite
Listen, you might have to sit down for this, as I’m about to deliver a hot take so sizzling that it’s going to make the floor lava and engulf your legs in flames if you’re not careful. The b-side to our #39 entry might be one of The Manics’ most overrated songs…
I know, I know, it’s an amazing song, there’s no denying that, it’s the freaking forty fifth best song they’ve ever done! It’s a whopping twenty eight places better than it was five years ago! Together Stronger only got to number 98! You must recognise how tight the competition is!
Jesus, is JDB an actual Munchkin?
Donkeys is an astonishingly accomplished piece of work that really would have fit the general anguish that ended up enveloping ‘Gold Against the Soul’ more than nonsense like Symphony of Tourette(“Children can be cruel she said/So I smashed her in the fucking head!/Sorry dear, that’s the nature of Tourette” – no. No it isn’t, lads, what are we doing here?), but I feel people need to chill out on it just a little bit. It’s always the automatic choice when people name the greatest ever Manics b-side, which is just… No. It’s not even the best b-side from the ‘GATS’ era (stay tuned, sports fans!). It’s an amazing, almost funky tune, that settles into an infectious groove better than any other Manics song. I’m not overreacting when I say that Prince’s Revolution would have killed to have kicked into this jam session one time. However, much as I love it, it doesn’t really go anywhere or incorporate much real excitement. I’m sorry, I’ll go to Manics Fan Jail right now without passing Go etc…
I can definitely understand why the band themselves rate it so highly though. Apart from maybe the lyrics, which are just… fine… the song Donkeys is perhaps the greatest recorded example of all the band’s musical talents. Firstly, the track hangs on an utterly filthy bassline by Nicky Wire, a man who would rarely pay much attention to such things. The drumming by Sean Moore is immaculate, staunch yet somehow as exhausted and defeated as the wider song. It’s probably one of The Manics’ songs where lead guitar play less of a central role, but when James Dean Bradfield is called in for his solo holy fuck does he nail it hard, and JBD’s screamed delivery of the line “Donkeys are only left with li-hi-hi-hi-hi-hies!” is more proof of everyone bringing their A game. So, no, it’s far from their greatest song, or even their greatest b-side, but listen to these talented fuckers! If you got this demo tape, you’d sign this band, no??
A song of quiet importance to the band as well, as the quality of the recording session with Alex Silva quietened any doubts they might have had over the band’s future after a pretty grim experience with the ‘GATS’ album. Oh, and also:
“The first two chords, nearly going into the third chord, are the same progression, with a different key and different overtones, as A Desin for Life. It would not have been born, musically, without Donkeys“
The more I see, the less I scream The figure eight inside out is infinity The naked light bulb is always wrong They make your brain complete Then they blow it to kingdom come
“Anyone out there still mystified as to what exactly it is that marks The Manics out as more than your average beat combo could do worse than consider Peeled Apples, the opening track from the band’s ninth studio album- there might possibly be another band that would furnish their album’s curtain-raiser with a chorus of “Rudderless horses on Chomsky’s Camelot/Bruises on my hands from tearing my nails out”, but The Manics are certainly the only band who would do so while cribbing the melody from Heaven 17’s Temptation.”
And in the margins of the page Truth hides but leaves a trace My complicated illusions Are now no more than faith
My complicated ill-loo-he-hoo-he-shons…
Listen, we’re all pretty switched on cats, aren’t we? Pretty smart cookies, I think it’s fair to assume? Switched on in the membrane, switched on in the brain? You’ve now read short (intelligent, incisive) reviews of almost 60 Manic Street Preachers songs, you’ve considered mental illness, the Holocaust, the quiet social murder of liberalism, Wales’ 2016 European Cup team, you’repretty turned on, tuned in and slicked up, yeah? Hal Robson-Kanuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, isn’t it? You have, in all likelihood, a degree in humanities. We all like the Manics songs that reinforce what clever little pricks we are, don’t we?
But, problematically, the band are probably the greatest in the world at just writing big, dumb rock songs. Complicated Illusions is shallow; its lyrics are interesting and pretty but generally forgettable; and it’s (correct usage) essentially just Hold Me Like Heaven (#69, dude) again. That ‘RIF’ song has dropped a massive 37 places this time as its cheap thrills have begun to wear off, but I’m not bored of Complicated Illusions yet! Give it its time in the sun, bask in its gorgeous melody, let that chorus seep into your very pores! As my mum always said, I’m a right fucking slut for a vocal riff, and the way JDB machine guns his way through singing the word ‘illusion’ gets me soaking wet.
And – eeesh – that Ed Sheeran approved “I defend the middle ground” sounds gross, but it was never intended to be. The lyric was inspired by Nicky reading the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Derrida was the developer of ‘deconstructionism’, an argument against the wider belief in ‘structuralism’. Structuralism is a way of thinking that recognises human life, culture and society as being a product of the underlying structures. Deconstruction, however, basically said “Fuck it, nothing means anything, there is no truth or meaning, #FakeNews”. Basically said that. Compilated Illusions is Nicky saying that perhaps the band operate somewhere in “The middle ground” between structuralism and deconstruction, because – fuck it – shit’s complicated. So, yeah, maybe Ed Sheeran would approve.
And money it just buys A new way to disguise A freedom you don’t own anymore
That’s me, that is…
Seriously, what did we all do to deserve a song as gorgeous and as life affirming as Divine Youth? Do I deserve this song? I’m still wearing the same socks as I did yesterday because they “smelled fine” this morning- I’m really not sure I do. And you? You, the reader? In what conceivable reality could you ever deserve a song as delicately exquisite as this?? All you’ve done so far today is write lengthy posts on one social media app about how much you hate people who use a different social media app, then you uploaded a video of a 12 year old girl dancing on TikTok to r/cringetopia and acted like you were exposing the fucking Watergate scandal, you think you deserve to even think about how effervescent Georgia Ruth William’s guest vocal is? Take her name out of your sweaty, Doritos crumb infested mouth!!
So, yeah, really good song. Performs a not dissimilar task on ‘Futurology’ as ‘This Is Yesterday does on their other career highlight, ‘The Holy Bible’, providing a warm safe space from the surrounding record’s insanity/horror. When’s the last time you listened to ‘Futurology’? I bet you’ve forgotten how great this song is.
Babes on the run with that poisoned lips Wrap your arms round this everlasting kiss Clinging to your own sense of waste All we love is lonely wreckage
Your school, your dole and your chequebook dreams Your clothes, your suits and your pension schemes Now you say you know how we feel Don’t fall in love ’cause we hate you still
Holy Jesus fucking Christ holy shit…
Listen, this top forty that we’re about to enter is pretty fucking stacked, and there’s a constant temptation to write chonker entries for each one pouring my heart and soul out devastatingly. I freaking love these songs, and looking at some of the killer tracks coming up on this list, I may spend 1’000+ words per entry gushing about how wonderful the song is and to what extent it changed and improved my life.
But I can’t even express how much I love Stay Beautiful. The first single on the band’s new Colombia Records* mega contract (the band sold out as soon as they could, and were never ashamed of trying to reach the most amount of people possible. 16 million records, remember?) to this day just perfectly encapsulates the band’s ambitions, their mission statement and the cult they had already created around themselves. And to us fans it was an absolutely boisterous call to arms, and ended up being used as just as much as a description of the Manics’ fandom. When they say “We’re a mess of eyeliner and spraypaint”, they’re not just referring to the band themselves, they’re talking about the whole community that was already in place and would soon become perhaps the biggest part of the band’s mythology. Every. Single. Fucking. Line in this song is not just an instant classic slogan, but has been adopted by the fans to almost foster solidarity between converts. Between the other people who were also denying the culture of consumption to celebrate the culture of destruction, aware that all they love is lonely wreckage. We were all broken up at seventeen, and here was this cult promising to make it all go away. When you write a message to another Manics fan, you should always end it by writing ‘Stay beautiful’. Confirm that you’re on their side. And the community did stay beautiful, remaining one of the most welcoming and least toxic fanbase imaginable. Stay Beautiful is the theme tune of that wonderful community and, aw shucks, this song gets me all emotional sometimes…
(*when they were about to play their idea for a first single to the enthusiatic producer Steve Brown for the first time, he was apparently very eager to work with them, only jokingly saying that he was sure its be great as long as they didn’t say “Fuck off” in the chorus. Erm… We might need a quick rewrite…)
Yeah, so this entry is about as short as they get from now on.
Went to Cuba to meet Castro Never got past sleepy Moscow A giant man with a heavenly voice MK Ultra turned you paranoid
No passport ’til 1958 McCarthy poisoned through with hate Liberty lost still buried today Beneath the lie of the USA
Fuck, man, this band used to mean something…
Was launching the album ”KYE’ with a gig at Karl Marx stadium, Havana, in February 2001 – becoming the first Western rock band to play in Cuba for at least over 20 years (or, in other calculations, ever) – mainly just a publicity stunt? Yes. Was it the greatest publicity stunt by any rock band in my lifetime? Also yes.
Even at their best, the band were never all the way Communists, even in their Karl Marx quoting situationist revolutionary days. These days, they’re more likely to bore their way to “Defend the middle ground” and not dare upset the apple cart that has bought them all millions of imperialist bucks, remaining silent not only on the genocide in Gaza but on this year’s inhumane Cuban blockade that has the explicit aim of impoverishing and eliminating the entire country. So, yeah, two genocides ignored really. Good going lads.
Ah, but mate, in 2001 they fucking got it!
“What about the human rights of the 5,000 people who lost their jobs in south Wales last week? Who are now having to work in call centres? No one talks about that. [Cuba is] the nearest thing we have on this planet to a true socialist state . . . it has higher literacy levels than the UK. There’s a decent health service available to all, and the average life expectancy is 76, which is higher than in the US”
The gorgeous Let Robeson Sing not appearing on the 2021 list may have been my most shameful omission. Sure, there are higher new entries this time, but all songs that I’d never properly considered before, or songs with powers that I was too cretinous to truly appreciate. What, I didn’t know about Let Robeson fucking Sing, one of the band’s most played and widely appreciated songs??
In truth, I didn’t really properly revisit the song before 2021’s list. C’mon, it was a huge hit, I heard it everywhere at the time, and it’s a fine song, but not one of their very best, surely??
It was only when ‘KYE’ was rereleased in 2022 that I properly evaluated what an absolute stone cold, pants down, bussy dripping classic it actually is, enough for me to rank it the 24th best song of that year. Not as high as Freedom of Speech Won’t Feed My Children, admittedly, a song which has ended up lower on this list, but them’s the breaks, I don’t make the rules. The cosmos makes the rules.And The Cosmopolitan Magazine, thanks to their generous sponsoring of the site 👍.
Let Robeson Sing might be the perfect latter-day* Manics song: the melody is water-tight, the mood is perfect, the vibes are tremendous, and the lyrics are underplayed but beautiful. And it’s a motherfucking history lesson, you get me? Reading about Paul Robeson since first learning about him in this song – after one of the biggest stars on the 1930s and 40s (the first black person to play Othello on stage in America, for example, in the longest run of a Shakespeare play ever on Broadway) was until recently so successfully written out of history – hearing other people admit that they were only first introduced through the Manics at least makes me feel a little less embarrassed about my ignorance. While, like the Manics themselves, Robeson at no point identified as a Communist, his vocal solidarity with antifascist causes, him sending his son to school in the Soviet Union to escape racism, and his continued solidarity with working people all around the world, meant he was still regarded as far too much of a freedom hating Commie and essentially blacklisted out of history itself. And how a man who could be described as one of 20th century America’s most notable activists against racial and economic injustices ended up forming such a strong bond with the miners of Wales is an inspiring example of the importance of the international proletariat.
Robeson singing with the Cwmbach Male Choir, London 1960
(*yeah, I know, 25 years old, but anything 21st century is ‘latter day’ to me, alright?)
Roses in the hospital Nothing really makes me happy Roses in the hospital Heroin is just too trendy
All we wanted was a home Now we’re so strung out, we wanna own Like a leaf in the autumn breeze Like a flood in January We don’t want your fucking love
You want me to write about this song again? I have whole blog posts relating to how much I adore this song. I love it so much even though, essentially, it’s ever so slightly shit. It’s essentially just Bowie’s Sound and Vision with new words; it’s ever so slightly gimmicky; the lyrics are a major example of early Manics perhaps ocassionally writing slogans first and perceptive words second; and all the self harm in the world can’t stop the song from sounding incredibly silly. It features percussion from Shovell from M People for Christ’s sake!!
But, oh God, it hits, mate, it fucking hits! That rhythm! That strummed intro! Those lyrics may be slogans but those slogans are incredible! That chorus doesn’t need to hit so hard but it knocks the rational part of your brain into your genitals! And like a flood… in Jan-yoo-ray-oo-yaaay!!!!. Feed me more, bitches.
I feel so bad about myself I feel so bad about everybody else If I could only save the world from itself Do something good, just for once So bring on the night Drive away the light Bring the kiddies down and make it seem alright
So welcome to the dead zone It’s a circus full of whores Get your body bought and sold Blinded by the glitter and the gold
HBA, mate, you’re gonna have to chill out.
Just… lovely. A sincere, melodically gluttonous, beautiful torch song that would be the most widely known and most successful commercial highpoint of almost every other rock band’s career. Though, admittedly, no other even moderately successful band of any era would have a chorus referring to a “Circus full of whores”. For the Manics, it was just a Your Love Alone b-side.
And it is a b-side, even if it was also the first time the band indulged in their admirably Stalinesque habit of purging political mistakes from their history, as it replaced the execrable Underdogson the ‘SATT’ tenth anniversary reissue. It’s a special edition of the album, guys, stop getting so weirdly upset about it. You don’t like that? OK, then sit down, right now, listen to Underdogs, and convince me that you don’t want to slice your ears off.
Somebody told me to vote Conservative Tragedy is not known under this dimmest of lights Everybody feels sick by the courtesy of dismay Was I schooled without direction?
Gold against the soul Rock ‘n’ roll has a conscience It supplies convenience..
Close the pits sanctify Roy Lynk an O.B.E. Shareholding a piece of this fucking country Fossilize – make Yorkshire into a tourist resort And dream of new ways to humble the poor.
Gold against the soul White liberal hates slavery Needs Thai labour to clean his home…
Gold against the soul Working class clichés start here Either cloth caps or smack victims Gold destroyed Destroyed the soul Destroyed the soul
People haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate this song. That’s extremely unfortunate, and you’ll have to believe me when I say that it gives me no pleasure at all to reveal how embarrassingly and laughably wrong people are.
The ‘GATS’ title track and album closer is an absolute fucking monster and among the band’s greatest album closers. In fact, if you’re going off this list (which, if you respect scientific process, you really should) it’s their second best ever.
The highest new entry on this year’s list after I was reintroduced to the song when conducting so much research into my mammoth review of ‘The Holy Bible‘ that my eyes would bleed at night. While reading about how the band’s masterpiece perfectly narrated the post-USSR calculated heightening of working class anxiety and insecurity, writers would continually point to the previous album’ stadium sized protest rock song as an example of the band covering the ground so well previously.
Roy Lynk, the former president of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, takes a starring role in the tale of working class needs be co-opted and then dismantled by more moneyed interests. And if you think Paul Robeson was deleted from history, trying finding a photo of this guy online! During the Miners’ Strike, Lynk had decided that the best way to preserve the mines in his native Nottinghamshire was to work with the Thatcher government, and so commanded his union to scab at striking mines and partake in the systematic destruction of working class unity. He was awarded an OBE for his efforts. Only then (snigger) – and you’ll like this (guffaw) – the government closed down all the mines in Nottingham anyway!! Soon after ‘GATS’ (and Gold Against the Soul) was released, Lynk handed back the OBE in protest at the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party‘s leopards eating his face, so well done there, Roy! You’re such an honourable man and, in the end, no longterm damage was really done, aye?
The album closer puts all of the previous nine tracks’ displays of anguish and self-hatred into the context of a long planned dismantling of the working class dignity. Gold erodes, erodes the soul.
Non Album, 2003… Yeah, I know it was on the brilliant ‘Lipstick Traces’ compilation, but then I have to check which other ‘non album’ tracks are on that collection, and it just gets messy, OK?
Blessed be the blade Blessed be the scythe Dionysos against the crucified
Blessed be the blade Blessed be the scythe Dionysos against the crucified
Find your truth Face your truth Speak your truth And be your truth…
Heal yourself Hurt yourself Judge yourself
They are the law
Up until the age of maybe 15, I was a freaking huge fan of the still ongoing British comic weekly 2000AD. I never bothered with the American nonsense like Marvel or DC, which I always saw as annoyingly optimistic and family friendly claptrap with brightly coloured heteronormative superheroes telling you to say your prayers and eat your vitamins. 2000AD though? It was all blood and tits and moral ambiguity!! Wire and Richey were also huge fans, which, I dunno, kind of validated me and made me feel almost cool? As kids, Nicky and Richey were such fans that they had a competition between themselves to see who could be the first to appear in the comic. Richey won and, trust me, £3 was a lot of money back then!
Later, when the band began announcing their existence, the comic confirmed that the admiration went both ways, and renowned comic book writer Grant Morrison included a character- Domino- in Zenith Phase III (the third part of his epic superhero saga) who was physically based on Nicky Wire back in 1991, before the band’s debut was released and back when they were little more than an a striking underground band with a handful of amazing singles under their belt.
Some joyless thrillkillers might whine about ‘coincidence’ and “what are you even doing? Is this really worth your time and attention?” and “When was the last time you spoke to your mother?”, but the fact is that Domino later appears wearing a Manic Street Preachers shirt, so… yeah… sometimes you’ve just gotta beat someone’s head with a reference.
Isn’t there another comic book character called ‘Domino’? Yeah, he’s shit, go all in with the Nicky version
And, yeah, this probably means that Nicky won that competition on points. In your face, Richey!
In a weird way, 2000AD were maybe the first major media outlet to properly throw their weight behind the Manics hype train, with the early 90’s UK music press still mostly rolling their eyes at this obnoxious rabble of hair metalists taking valuable space away from Slowdive and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (see the below comic from Melody Maker), aside from super chad journalists like Steven Wells and Simon Price recognising the mindblowing wonder on show early on. And why wouldn’t 2000AD fall so rapidly in love?? The Manics came as readily packed comic book characters! They looked like how 200AD artists would draw the most dangerous street thugs in 2099 Mega City One! They shared the same desire to present themes of antifascism and occasionally left wing politics in as striking and as colourful a package as possible in order to convert the most possible people.
Get it? They’re Welsh. I do appreciate the Rebecca Riots reference though, that’s a deep cut
So of course the band were going to be asked to contribute a song to the 1995 Judge Dredd movie, and of course they would be honoured! Listen, nobody knew how much the movie would absolutely stink back then. However, after demoing the song, Richey disappeared and the band kinda didn’t feel like still contributing one of his last songs to a dumb Hollywood character evisceration of 2000AD’s biggest character anymore. They kind of had other priorities at the time, so shelved it indefinitely.
“Comics aren’t my department. And I knew Richey was a big fan of Walkby Pantera, which I do think was quite a startling sound, but I remember saying to him it’s too males, too blunt for me. But he was bang into the idea straight away, and I’m just thinking ‘We’ll submit a song, they won’t like it and that’ll be that'”.
Thankfully for appreciators of ‘Amazing Things’, they returned to finish the demo with Dave Eringa for the 2003 b-sides and rarities collection ‘Lipstick Traces’. And- wowsers! Hooba-hooba! Whargwhargwharg! Dibble, what?!?!- thank whatever Gods you have formed a codependent relationship with that this mini masterpiece was rescued from the Dredd Dump. The song slaps, it fucks, it gobbles, it swallows, it spits. That ‘diddle-diddle-ding, wha-uh-whah’ guitar line? That motherfucker gonna get you pregnant. Judge Yr’self exists as possibly the nearest thing to a recorded suggestion of where the band would have gone musically would Richey have stayed, with at least the ‘Pantera’ aspect of Edwards’s “Pantera meets Screamadelica and Lynton Kwesi Johnson” ambitions covered. It’s a wonderful consolidation of all their first three albums, with the glam rock 大胆子 of ‘Generation Terrorists’, the radio grunge low register of ‘Gold Against the Soul’, and the dark nihilism of ‘The Holy Bible’. Get Andrew Weatherall to produce, pepper it with Lynton Kwesi Johnson vocal samples- who doesn’t want to hear that album??
I threw out all my comics when I was about 16, because back then having a comic book collection was the surest way of never getting laid outside of trying to beckon girls to your bedroom using a trail of Pogs. And, obviously, getting to even perhaps touch a girl’s boob through her t-shirt was all I cared about, and literally everything I ever did had to be in some way focused on achieving this goal. And so it remains to this day. With decreasing success. And, honestly, the bar was fucking low even when I started. Anyway, back in those days you just threw away shit like that, the wider culture hadn’t yet begun pandering to people my age by organising a whole world that constantly flashes people images of their childhood to make them care less about the wider socioeconomic fuckery and more about injecting hollow nostalgia into their eyeballs. Some people mourn the ankle injury that prevented them from going pro and winning the Super Bowl, I think about how much all of those mint condition comics would go for to a clinically depressed forty something in New Hampshire. Why didn’t my parents tell me that someday soon I’d be able to financially abuse the nostalgia of despaired middle aged men?
Here’s my gift to you, a soundtrack to the void The deepest of interludes, the myths that you destroyed
I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about 2018’s ‘Resistance is Futile’. I don’t mean I’m constantly swinging between loving and hating the record, more that I haven’t yet decided whether it’s a ‘fine, I suppose’ album or actually the worse thing since AIDS was invented. It’s definitely the hardest Manics album to find things worth talking about; the hardest to find the energy to debate, defend or defile; and, if I’m being brutally honest, the one most likely to disappear from your memory five minutes after each time you listen, even if it’s your 100th time. It’s probably not their worst album – I hope none of us never get to an age where we experience a record worse than ‘Postcards from a Young Man’ – but it might simply be their most ‘meh’, their most forgettable. Yes, ‘PFAYM’ is a steaming dung encrusted skip full of bloodied aborted creative babies, but I could write 10’000 words on all the reasons it sucks. I tried my hardest to forcefeed ‘RIF’ when it came out in 2018, thinking that there must have been some hidden depths that hadn’t revealed themselves to me yet, they couldn’t go this basic following the career highlight of ‘Futurology’. But no. There’s little there, I’m sorry. There aren’t many bad song on the record, but the lyrics rarely announce themselves, and the general song quality is generally at ‘lesser b-sides’ level at best. Even after all the time I spent sifting through ‘RIF’s dirt desperately looking for small flakes of gold, even after the obscene amounts of exposure I allowed upon myself, I could only hum you maybe three songs right now.
One of those songs though, ammi right? Umph! Ooooh! Right there, that’s it!
International Blue was the first single released from the album and- once you got over the initial slight disappointment that obviously no wheels were getting reinvented on the band’s thirteenth (!!) record and there would be a definite artistic regression from ‘Futurology’- it’s about as accomplished and entertaining a stadium rock song as you’re ever likely to hear. Obviously designed for radio rotation, but absolutely in the best way possible. We have the riff that slightly calls to mind the #6 song on this list; the pristine production; and in the end we have an extraordinarily snappy anthem that was typical of the rest of the album in style but, crucially, absolutely not in quality.
The homework from the song is further reading into the artist Yves Klein, one of the pioneers of modern art who, from what I can gather invented a colour! I mean, the colour he invented was basically a different shade of blue, so not one of the major ones, but still, hats off Yves!
Into a vein exhibit the derelict A secular mosaic distracted at birth A Cubist abstraction let it live forever Narcissism so lonely so live by the sea
God, this song is so bananas that it could fill several full but not particularly varied fruit bowls. Lyrics by Wire that actually sound close to some of the surreal stream of consciousness that we would later learn that Richey was writing in before his disappearance, backed by absolutely insane and heavily sonically treated scum rock that sounds like it’s both having a mental breakdown but also waving a switchblade around and looking at your with fury in its eyes. ‘
What a mess
Yeah, gonna have to agree with you on that, good call.
But, holy heavens, what a mess! Intravenous… might be the most laughably ‘Manics’ song title imaginable, but the song beneath it is truly one of the most experimental and ingenious rock songs in their catalogue. It’s fucking bonkers, yes, but beneath the near unintelligible (but still absolutely amazing) lyrics (‘We all pray for pluralist babies’???) is one of the band’s most successful examples of trying to add a bit of extra flair and panache to their standard rock style. The drumming awakens the dead, the guitar is like if Sonic Youth fucking cheered up a bit and the bass… yeah, the bass is fine, well done Nicky. The duelling guitars spinning out of control and sounding like a fighter pilot going down before the final chorus is one of the most giddily exciting things the band have ever put on record. It all adds up to a song that rocks harder than Dwayne Johnson’s amateur geology collection, and the band should have maybe focused on filling ‘KYE’ with more tracks like this. It was promoted to opening track of the restructured album’s second disk – ‘Solidarity’ – on the 2022 rerelease. And while it acts as a more than suitable introduction to the disk’s Looney Tune adventures, its a level of blissed out insanity that the band struggle to live up to over their entire career, never mind the rest of the album.
The difference between love and comfort Is that comfort’s more reliable and true Brittle and mocking but always there A crutch for enmities saddest glare
Yeah, maybe they did do a lot of great b-sides…
There’s no sane line to be drawn between the ultra lavish radio grunge of ‘GATS’ and the claustrophobic and anxious repressed fury of ‘THB’, an album that sounds like it was recorded in the underground bunker of a group of Marxist extremist terrorists as the bombs from the (US backed) government’s military onslaught shake the stones from the wall to signify the long military struggle coming to its mortal end. That is, unless you’d heard the b-side of ‘GATS’s final single release. The #25 a-side it was coupled with, as marvellous as that song is, represented all the excesses of the ‘GATS’ era. It was a shiny and polished US rock homage, with expensive sounding production that made every acoustic strum and every individual string on every individual violin in every individual orchestra included on the track just slither in through your ears and start heavy petting your most responsive brain cells. Y’know, like Bon Jovi or summat? On the other side, though, is one of the most fascinating and just dang savage songs in the Manics’ career.
Comfort Comes shares some DNA with ‘GATS’, such as it’s infectious and pumping chorus or it’s general toe-tapping radio rock bent, but the song exists far more as an early heads up to where the band would soon take their sound. They strip away all the embellishments that they’d recently become a little too dependant on, until all you have left is a simple, clinical and altogether intense guitar and drum line stabbing itself into your ears rhythmically. Both the everchanging tempo and JDB’s barked delivery offer the first examples of the perversely militaristic stylings they’d often adopt on their next album, and the crippled and pained guitar solo could probably expect itself to be the subject of a future Richey lyric, so anguished and tragic its existence sounds.
And the line “A crutch for enmities saddest glare”?? Can you be any more ‘Holy Bible’??
20 ft. high on Blackpool promenade Fake royalty second hand sequin facade Limited face paint and dyed black quaff Overweight and out of date
Oh well
The Manics do great openers. Of the fifteen released albums that count, nine of the openers are good enough to be listed in this scientific appraisal. Aaaaaaw, darn, so if I’d included Critical Thinking then that would have made it a nice round ten?? Bollocks. Something to keep in mind in 2031.
Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier is the opening track of ‘EMG’, and absolutely proves the rule. It’s also one of the very few Manics songs that the band admit to not really knowing what it’s about- Nicky finished Richey’s lyrics while conceding that he didn’t really know what his former bandmate was getting at. The references to dead American culture influencing near dead British towns is almost a Richey standard, and might be suggesting the hell he had previously outlined in ifwhiteamerica… (#46) is slowly crawling into his own country. I’d also be interested in finding out who wrote the ‘Overweight and out of date’ line, as it rather presciently references one of the accusations that would soon be levelled at the band themselves
Why is Richey’s disappearance still a mystery? Look at the other three, they obviously ate him
. letter to Melody Maker in around 1998 that has always stuck with me and I promise I’ve never laughed at
Also, a semi-colon in the title! That’s worth something, isn’t it?
Sovereign fingers scrape our lives until we are bought Screaming comatose with blackboard chalk Siphoned minds suck a wallet full of love Spitting out a language I don’t wanna talk
Mother of the free! She says that we’d breathe! Mother of the free, but we just bleeeeeed!
OK, forget what I said about the band not releasing that many great b-sides, Democracy Coma blows the Loves Sweet Exile (#58)/Repeat a-sides out of the freaking water to a ridiculous extent. The song is also such a creative step up from so much of their debut album (including, let’s be honest, the two songs on the a-side) that it’s weird that it was left off. Perhaps the debut album was already done and dusted by the time they wrote this mini-masterpiece, in which case it’s evidence of how quickly the band developed artistically to quickly come up with this relatively complex piano led piece of genius.
Also… real drums…? All of ‘GT’ was a programmed drum machine (and JDB ended up playing all the bass parts), but Democracy… sounds… like actual drums…? I dunno, someone please confirm.
It was actually added to the US release of ‘GT’, so I’m sure the eight Americans who brought the album were very pleased.
Geister wie verlegter Schlaf Zeit, die zurückgelassen habe Renne weiter um zu fliehen Renne weiter weg von dem Leben
You can smell him when you look at him, can’t you?
Recently on this list, we’ve seen the band pull off stadium protest rock, a piano led Springsteen paean to the Queen’s coronation being “another auto-da-fé“, and the glue sniffing terrorised nonsense of Intravenous Agnostic. However, even when you take into consideration the sickening horror show of The Intense Humming of Evil (#50), the band probably haven’t released a track less orthodoxically Manics and more endearingly odd than Europa Geht Dirch Mich. Especially as it was pushed as one of the lead-in singles to their triumphant ‘Futurology’ album.
At least… it was kind of a single?? I don’t really understand how charts work now, then, and ever, but before the album was released they posted a full video of the song on to YouTube (and maybe Spotify, who knows?) but no ‘physical’ release and this was back in the days before Spotify and YouTube plays counted towards a song’s chart placing. If YouTube plays count these days. I’m not sure. Who’s number one while I’m writing this? Sienna Spiro?? I literally have no idea who that is!! She looks like she wasn’t even born when Amy Winehouse died, can we please attempt to move on as a culture?? Does that have a big view count on YouTube though? “The provided metadata for this video does not include current view count information“??? This used to be a country…
Anyway, Europa*… acted as both the trailer and unofficial theme tune of their new direction, letting everyone know that ‘Futurology’ was going to be a little bit weird, a little bit Teutonic, a little bit supported by outstanding choices of guest vocalists, and a lot freaking amazing. Europa… is an absolute and slightly unhinged delight. Centred around a repetitive and robotic krautrock (eugh, can we please think of a better name for it than that?**) beat that wouldn’t sound out of place on Prince’s ‘Dirty Mind‘ album, occasionally punctuated by a ringing “UH-WEAH-UH!’ siren that, to be honest, would likely sound out of place on any album. All topped by JDB barking his vocals in his best antsy military sergeant style and a rhythm section simply pounding at your already deceased corpse. Even the choice of guest vocalist is a pretty bananas decision that ends up being absolute genius. While other ‘Futurology’ tracks feature perfect additions from experienced and talented vocalists such as Georgia Ruth and Green Gartside, Europa… enlists the talents of Nina Hoss, a German actor and political activist with no real singing experience to speak of. And it fucking works! Hoss’s barked and aggressive delivery is an inspired addition to JDB’s voice, allowing the song to feel like you’re being roughly admonished on both sides, and half in a language you don’t even speak!! Inspired. Or, I dunno, the band just couldn’t think of a German singer and ‘Fenster zum Sommer‘ happened to be playing on the TV at the time. In another timeline, they enlisted Lou Bega. Whatever.
(* It’s like if hip-hop was forever stuck with the name… Actually, you know what? I’m not going there
**which in German means
*checks notes*
*Googles it*
*visits library*
*contacts local sage*
*summons Cthulhu after reading the Necronomicon and worshipping the High Priest*
*checks Wikipedia*
‘Europe’. It means ‘Europe’. The Germans like adding vowels to things)
And, yes, ‘Futurology’ is a passionate and unashamed European album, of which Europa**… is the central calling card. Almost exactly two years after the album’s release, the UK voted to leave the European Union.
“For one thing, I don’t agree with referendums, they’re banned in Germany. They are too linear, too exploitative. I believe in parliamentary democracy. I voted remain but I do understand people who didn’t. There are a lot of working class people in parts of Britain who have been left to die, and they see Europe as a neo-liberal experiment for rich people and multinationals.
I think the European Union should have been reformed, but it is still the right way to go. But I wasn’t surprised by Brexit in the same way I wasn’t surprised by Trump, because people get sick of the idea of London. I mean London gets Crossrail and it costs £15 billion, that’s half the budget that Wales gets for a year!
People outside of London are asking, ‘Why don’t I get fucking anything?’ But for me, I spend my life traveling through Europe, and that’s about to become much more difficult. It’s a case of one person saying, ‘You’re a cunt’ and the other person answering, ‘Well, you’re a bigger cunt!’”
What’s the point in always looking back When all you see is more and more junk
Doo-no-nerr-dada-doo-no-nerr…
The band’s greatest ever album closer, and a simply perfect conclusion to the emotional yet triumphant stadium rock roller coaster that was 1996’s comeback ‘Everything Must Go’. Despite being written a couple of years beforehand, while Richey was still in the group and in the throes of a nightmarish European tour that they all kind of assumed would be the bands last:
“The record was dead. Richey was obviously fucked up out of his mind. Sean had an absolute nightmare couple of days in Spain, where he nearly died choking on a piece of bread in a service station and Brian the lighting guy had to do the Heimlich manoeuvre. Then James and Sean nearly died by carbon monoxide poisoning because the generator in the bus had been left on. And then we stopped at these other services and there was a lorry, absolutely rammed full of pigs going to slaughter”
The song (which Richey heard and “Didn’t mind”) that sounded in 1996 like a gorgeous and respectable veil being placed over the band’s previous era, was actually written as one final goodbye to the stupid band itself, as they were all sick of this fucking shit. In 1994.
You need your stars, even killers have prestige Access to a living you will not see 24-hour boredom, I’m convicted instantly Gorgeous poverty of created needs
Slash ‘N’ Burn might not technically be the greatest opening track in the band’s history, but there may not be a more perfect introductory song on a band’s debut album in the 150 or so years of recorded music. It’s all here – the wildly dated* hair metal stylings; the disparate influences (critics immediately pointed out how the song’s title may as well have been ‘Slash ‘N’ Axl’) in an era when you were only allowed to be influenced by either Nirvana or Madchester; the impossibly breathtaking sloganeering (“Third world to the first/Kill to live!”, “Chained to economy now famine has been!”, “Politics here’s death and god is safer sex!”); some lyrics that are laughably yet somehow also provocatively terrible (“Worms in the garden more real than McDonalds/Drain your blood and let Exxon spill in!”, “Madonna drinks coke and so can you too/Tastes real good not like sweet poison should!”).
(*in 1992 at least, I’m sure it’s eagerly come in and then laughably fallen out of fashion on at least fourteen separate occasions in the 30 odd years since)
It might have multiple issues – ranging from a laughably tinny production to… well… did you not see that Madonna line?? – but Slash… simply overflows with charm. It also screamed “This band is really something“, it was an unashamed rallying cry for a cult that would soon envelop those brave/dumb enough to be drawn in by the high camp punk/glam/metal revolution the band were demanding while also winking at their audience and suggesting their tongues were at least partially caressing the inside of their cheeks. It also screamed the obvious belief that this band would soon become the biggest freaking thing in the world!! Surely Slash… would only make total sense if 60’000+ stadium attendees were screaming along?? And who wouldn’t want to get in on the ground floor here??
Oh! And you get to wear lipstick and feather boas! Did we mention those?
And the songs sometimes have cowbells.
That’s all you neeeeeeeed! That’s all you neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed!!!
I feel like I’m missing pieces of sleep A memory fades to a pale landscape You were an extinction, a desert heat A blind illness of my anxiety
OK, obviously we ain’t playing no more. Another absolutely devastatingly awesome opening track (there are at least two more to come), and the band’s meaty cock rock ambitions for their second album most perfectly realised. After Slash and Burn, Sleepflower is built on yet another huge, infectious and delicious JDB riff that Wire would continuously compare to Thunderstruck, and containing a breathless and stunning breakdown that JDB wanted to create in the vein of the Ruts’ West One (Shine on Me) . I have to say, both similarities are… debatable…
Let killers view themselves like they view the world They pick at the holes Not punish less, rise the pain Sterilise rapists All I preach is extinction
Kill Yeltsin, who’s saying? Zhirinovsky, Le Pen Hindley and Brady, Ireland, Allitt, Sutcliffe Dahmer, Nilsen, Yoshinori Ueda Blanche and Pickles, Amin, Manic Street Preachers
Listen, this post is already ridiculously long. If I wrote 100’000 words on the astonishing Archives of Pain I would likely not even be able to adequately crack the surface of one of the most complex and widely debated songs in the band’s back catalogue. Sorry, I’m underplaying this: the most complex and widely debated song. And the most controversial. And the most… Unsettling? Disturbing? Challenging? Mate, there’s a lot going on here, it even stands out as dark and worrying on ‘The Holy freaking Bible‘.
So… is it a celebration of corporal punishment?
Yes.
Yes it is.
That’s really not up for debate here. This pretty much entirely Richey penned lyric is absolutely and fervently in favour of retributive punishment and brutal forfeiture. That’s the text. The only question is the intentions of the writer. Some fans have attempted to argue – shocked at the possible perversion of an accepted leftist position – that Richey is actually writing in the character and from the perspective of the band’s ideological opponents. Which is fine, read whatever you want to in a piece of art, that’s your prerogative*, and anyone’s reading is as legitimate as anyone else’s, including the band themselves. I would just argue that your reading is absolutely not evident in the text. You could perhaps argue that it simply presents another person’s opinion and leaves the moral interpretation up to the listener, similar to the, erm, ‘problematic’ views on anorexia extolled by the protagonist of our #11 song. The difference though is that #11 song is explicitly in character, while Archives… is completely in the author’s own voice. Even Nicky has attempted to dampen the hysteria around the track, claiming that it was actually an argument against the fascination and glorification of serial killers in the media and wider culture (and this was decades before the true crime documentary boom). This is a widely held belief, and one with slightly more merit than the ‘character’ defence, but I would still argue that – aside from the ‘Give them the respect they deserve’ refrain – it’s not completely evident in the text. I’ve said ‘text’ a lot, haven’t I? Because this is a proper review.
‘The weak die young and right now we crouch to make them strong’
(*everybody talking all this stuff about you, why can’t they just let you live?)
Jesus, I didn’t want to write to much about this song, but it’s just so damn deep! My two cents is that the song is absolutely in favour of the death penalty, it’s far too considerate of the speaker’s point of view to be understood as supporting the opposite view. Also, the line ‘Nail it to the House of Lords/You will be buried in the same box as a killer’ suggest that Richey knew that this was a controversial belief and was questioning why that was the case. Fuck, man, maybe it’s just an artistic troll, Richey writing a deliberately provocative affront to liberal values, like he was the mid-90s version of 6ix9ine. Or maybe it’s just a conversation starter, designed to inspire useless debate such as this. Maybe Richey was just in favour of the death penalty. All we ever talk about is shit like ‘author’s intentions’, but we never actually attempt to argue with the statements made in the song. Is that because we… can’t…
Anyway, fuck all this pseudo-intellectual bullshit, let’s just go through the people Richey wants to execute! Fun!
Introduced neoliberalism to post Soviet Russia, selling off important assets and resources for pennies and created all the oligarchs who own those lovely houses you pass on your long commute to work.
An absolute gift of an insanely nationalistic Russian politician who is still up to his nonsense to very day! Once suggested building huge fans on the Russian borders to blow all radioactive waste into the Balkan states. Frequently breaks out into fist fight during debates, ensuring viral internet immortality. Once said that America was full of “cocksuckers, handjobbers, and faggots” and, Jesus Christ, called Condoleezza Rice “a black whore who needs a good cock. Send her here, one of our divisions will make her happy in the barracks one night. She will choke on Russian sperm as it will be leaking out of her ears… until she crawls to the US embassy in Moscow on her knees”. Seriously, this guy is a lot.
Standard immigrant hating far right prick. Just saying, if we did execute Jean-Marie sometime in late 1968, we’d be saved a lot of bullshit, and also be spared the conceiving of the equally odious Marine. Why didn’t we ever listen to the Manics? They tried to save us! Hmmm. Might be coming around to this song…
Myra Hindley and Ian Brady
Needs little introduction or explanation. In the UK, they’re pretty much as popular and as gossiped about as the Kardashians. Hmmm. Might be coming around to this song…
Immortalised in a BBC documentary in 2004; an ITV drama in 2006; and a documentary on Channel 4 in 2022, among many, many others.
Colin Ireland
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh… British serial killer who managed to brutally kill five homosexual men in three months in 1993 and was hence known as the – Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh!! – ‘Gay Slayer’. Fuck you, Richey, for forcing me to read up on all these people.
Immortalised on episodes of ‘Encounters With Evil’ (Season 1, Episode 1); ‘Britain’s Most Evil Killers’ (Season 3, Episode 10); ‘Voice of a Serial Killer’ (Series 1, Episodes 2 & 3), and ‘Crimes That Shook Britain’ (Series 4, Episode 6), plus he got to headline his own documentary in 2020 called, inevitably, ‘Gary Ireland: The Gay Slayer’.
Jesus H Christ, this is how I’m spending my Sunday? Beverley was a nurse who attempted to kill thirteen children by giving them overdoses of insulin over a 59 day period in 1991. Four died. Sorry, I was underselling it with ‘children’. They were babies. She killed four babies and attempted to kill nine more.
Star of ‘The Beverley Allitt Tapes’, available on both Apple TV and Prime Video!
He really was truly very sorry. Yorkshire Ripper, murdered 13 women and attempted to kill seven more. Archives… opens with a recording of the mother of one of his victims:
“I wonder who you think you are You damn well think you’re God or something? God give life, God taketh it away – not you I think you are the Devil itself”
Irene MacDonald, the mother of Jayne MacDonald, 16 years old when she was murdered
Star of BBC’s ‘The Yorkshire Ripper Files’ in 2019 and Netflix’s ‘The Ripper’ in 2020.
Wow, this guy did it all! Rape, cannibalism, dismemberment, necrophilia… If you’re playing ‘Gross Murderers Top Trumps’, then Dahmer is the card that you’ll really want to hold onto. Was apparently also known as the ‘Milwaukee Cannibal’, but that was obviously a failed attempt at branding as I don’t think it really took off.
Dahmer appears on screen more times than Danny Trejo, not just the infamous Neflix ‘Monster’ series, but ‘The Jeffrey Dahmer Files’; ‘Raising Jeffrey Dahmer’; ‘Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein’, ‘Jeffrey Dahmer: Killer Cannibal’, ‘My Son Jeffrey, The Dahmer Family Tapes’; ‘Jeffrey Dahmer: Mind of a Monster’ and literally a dozen more on every streaming service you own.
Sigh… Yeah, another serial killer. Killed at least twelve young men by strangulation and/or drowning. Can I stop soon?? How many freaking gross people did they manage to fit into this chorus??
‘The Nilsen Files’, ‘Memories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes’, and delightfully portrayed by Dr Who in 2020’s ‘Des’.
Christ, this guy doesn’t even have a photo online. A real ‘deep cut’ (as it were) serial killer there, Richey, kudos. He killed five people in the early 90s, using dog walking as a cover to poison them with suxamethonium, which he had seen being used to put down dogs.
All I’m saying is ‘The Osaka Dog Lover Murders (大阪愛犬家連続殺人事件)’ would make a great addition to Paramount Plus’s Autumn schedule
Less a ‘serial killer’, which is a welcome change of pace, and more an ‘absolute piece of shit’. South African white nationalist who encouraged violence to preserve minority rule in protest of the end of apartheid. This is the future that people who still believe in maintaining an Israel state are dreaming of. Thankfully, he was murdered in 2010…No, I don’t mean ‘thankfully’, I just… Shit, I don’t even know anymore…
Wow, really small time, very much the Ringo Starr in this group of horrendous reprobates. Controversial judge who wasn’t really a fan of rape victims, didn’t know who The Beatles were and was unanimously described as ‘colourful’ upon his death, which is the polite way of saying ‘cunty’.
My idea of love comes from A childhood glimpse of pornography Though there is no true love Just a finely tuned jealousy
When JDB sings Richey’s lyric of “I don’t wanna be a man”, he’s not awkwardly transbaiting like Wire would later even less elegantly attempt on ‘TIMTTMY’s Born a Girl. He means he doesn’t want to be an adult. The whole song is about (wait or it) life becoming a landslide after birth, it’s got nothing to do with gender identity, instead how your whole life getting near traumatically complex after your “Very first second a screaming icon”. Why does nobody get that?? Is it the mention of pornography, because only men like porno??
“”Henry Miller said: ‘At the edge of eternity is torture, in our mind’s never-ending ambition to damage itself.’ That’s what we would like to write about.”
Sorry, I fucking love this song, and I find all of the writers describing its lyrics as ‘confused’ are obviously more confused themselves. Is the song itself confused?? Well…it can’t really decide whether it’s a solemn acoustic ballad or a meaty stadium rock shout along… Yeah, OK, you might have a point, but fuck all y’all, this song rules.
And the main inspiration for such a delicate yet searing exposure of life’s ethereal disintegration was – eeeeeesh – RHCP’s ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik‘, especially the song Could Have Lied. Listen even I had that fucking album, so I can kinda relate, though I’m at least a decade younger so maybe my stupidity can be more easily forgiven.
But… Yeah, John Frusciante’s guitar playing on that album is pretty spectacular.
The only free choice is the refusal to pay Life reduced to suicidal comforting Cigarette death, it’s s_ckling Choked on the same lines that we’ve all said
Spectators of suicide Exploding in society’s eye Spitting glass from our mouths Dying like yesterday
“So the concept is this, basically. We’re going to walk on this nation. We’re going to walk on this racist power structure and we’re going to say to the whole damn government stick ’em up, motherfucker this is a hold up. We come for what’s ours”
Robert George “Bobby” Seale
And with that spoken introduction by the co-founder of the Black Panthers, so begins what I consider to be one of the all-time great ‘lost’ rock anthems. You Love Us (later rerecorded and at #85) was the band’s second release on the Heavenly Records label- a London based independent that is still going today- and according to Nicky Wire the label bosses were far more impressed with that single’s b-side than they were any other song, stating in 2008 that it was the first time the label accepted that this weird bunch of Welsh hellraisers might be “a proper band”.
Because the original Heavenly version of Spectators… is an absolute marvel. A wonderful radio rock effort, a political rock anthem that seemed to support all of the band’s manifesto and ambitions, an incredibly accomplished piece of work that looks to G’N’F’n’R’s ‘Use Your Illusion’ albums for influence rather than the usual ‘Appetite for Destruction’. As a piece of music, it absolutely soars, relying on the kind of piano and organ instrumentation that were very rare for the band at the time. The production isn’t great, but that only adds to the rawness and unfiltered emotion the band are presenting. The lyrics? The usual brilliance: “Obedience to the law is free desire/Under curfew from sharp neon barbed wire/Wasting away this country, wearing like born dead/Free heroin shots for those who will no longer beg”. Were the band (specifically JDB) playing down their abilities on their debut album in order to sound more ‘punk’ and ‘raw’? Our #6 entry certainly stands out in terms of technical ability.This is where I wonder why it was not included on the debut album, isn’t it? Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell…
We kind of did get Spectators… on the debut album. Kind of. The version we got on the album was… different. And, let’s be honest, a bit shit. All of the passion and the hard rock breakdowns are removed, and instead we get wavy sub-prog nonsense. Why are you like this, Manics?? “An abomination”, says JDB, “An absolute crime on every level”. At least in 2020 the band had another crack at it, re-recording the song to tie in with a new book on Heavenly Records written by Robin Turner, maintaining the spirit and structure of the original but shining it up with far superior production. That version is fantastic, the inclusion of Gwenno on co-vocals is inspired, and it obviously shits on that abortion of an album edit, but it’s impossible to capture the magic of that 1991 original.
Ceremonial rape machine Love won’t corrode you Ceremonial rape machine Love won’t corrode you
Yeah, that’s the chorus, what’s your point? The song was actually originally titled Ceremonial Rape Machine before the snowflakes at the Heavenly record label decided to virtue signal by asking them to change it.
Hot damn! Another 1991 b-side (this time to our #5 entry), another angry anti-monarchy rant, another experimentation with piano backing and more complex song writing, another rock anthem that supports my wild theory that the band played down their abilities for their debut album, another freaking classic that was left off the debut album for some reason!! No, of course not, we can’t lose Damn Dogor So Dead can we? What’s that? We have space for an impassioned anti-royalty screed? Well let’s go the sub-Queen route one rabble rouser Repeatthen. Oh, we have space for two you say?? Well in that case let’s have two versions of the sub-Queen route one rabble rouser Repeat then!! And, importantly, let’s male the second version borderline unlistenable!!
Hi TIME Magazine, hi Pulitzer Prize Vulture stalked white piped lie forever Wasted your life in black and white
Da, da, da-da! Da, da, da! Dabble-um-dum…
‘TIMTTMY’ may have sold more, and ‘THB’ and ‘Futurology’ were arguably stronger artistically, but there’s little doubt that 1996’s triumphant comeback after Richey’s disappearance – ‘Everything Must Go‘ – was the band’s most successful album overall. They managed to make the leap from cult favourites to legitimate superstars after losing the member whose own cult of personality was the main reason they had inspired such a devoted fanbase in the first place. They managed to make the most commercially viable music of their career while also not jettisoning off the central artistic and lyrical themes- their main Manicness– that had initially made them so special. Yeah, I know, the clothes became less ‘slash and burn’ and more ‘H&M’, but the Legacy Fans generally accepted that as a short term grieving process when the music was this good.
I said ‘cult of personality’…
The lyrics to Kevin Carter even suggest that Richey also read which way the wind was blowing. One of his last lyrics he was present to witness (and approve of) the band putting musical backing to, it’s actually a real step away from both the Marxist amphetamine style of his writing on the earlier records, and the politically giddy yet somehow devastatingly beautiful – “The horror, the horror! Tito likes being pegged!” – lyrical style of ‘THB’. Kevin Carter’s lyrics are, relatively, rather simple to understand- at least with a little background information- and this might be the closest thing we ever got to Richey writing a lyric seemingly with wider commercial success in mind. It was also Richeys first (and only?) lyric detailing a specific, real person’s life.
Sure, the subject is still a little horrific: Keven Carter was a South African photographer who rose to prominence capturing slices of brutality in his country’s apartheid system before winning the Pulitzer Prize for his photo of a child being stalked by a vulture during Sudan’s appalling 1993 famine*. It lead to Carter receiving wide condemnation for not doing more to help the child or address the situation (that’s another debate entirely) and the guilt lead to him taking his own life just months later. Make your own Richey analogies, I’m not here to spell everything out for you, come on. But it’s still a relatively concise and snappy lyric that didn’t sound at all out of place on either Radio 1’s or Radio 2’s playlist as it politely shifted its way into the top ten. As great as it is, it’s basically ‘My First Richey Lyric’ and one you could easily explain to your Mum. Despite all this though, JDB’s delivery of ‘Tribal scars in technico-co-lour-her-ah-her-er’ is further proof of Richey never quite getting the hang of writing to a basic song structure.
Whit-whoo, hubba-hubba, a-roo-ga, ammi right??
(*I’ve not included any of his photos in this piece because, holy shit, they definitely lean more towards the ‘massively traumatic’ end of important historical documents. Have this lovely photo of Kevin Carter himself instead, and delve further at completely your own risk)
“I’m really, really sorry. The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist…depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…”
Musically as well, it’s a complete banger, with stabbing horn instrumentation like if Motown were asked to score Psycho, and rumbling drums adding to the song’s slightly anxious mutli-tempoed structure. It’s a sign of just how hot the band were in 1996 that they could smuggle such heartrending unease straight onto the hit parade.
So cool the new sound of the decade Thinks it’s so fresh not a post-Elvis still All taste is nothing old pictures blow-dried Rebellion it always sells at a profit I am a face of fashion in Soho Square My tie is Paul Smith or Gaultier My cheeks blood-red as my favourite port But hey! Cocaine keeps cholesterol at bay
Listen…
Listen…
Listen.
First of all, shut the fuck up. Nostalgic Pushead may be the worst song title in all of recorded human art, but it’s absolutely one of the Manics’ greatest rock songs. Yeah, it’s dumb, sure, I’ll give you that, and that vocoder vocal ensuring the listener that “So cool the new sound of the decade” is – I’ll concede – really fucking naff. But, my God, that drummed intro, the drive, the passion, the way JDB screams “Rebellion it always sells at a PRO-FIT!!” is tremendous enough to make milk seep from your nipples in anticipation*, the way the intro finally crashes in all around you and JDB roars in with “I am the rrrrrrrrrraping sunglass gaze/Of sweating man and escort agencies” is thrilling enough to make a potato pregnant**. The song’s a fucking riot, and stands out as one of the more ambitious and experimental tracks from their most unfairly maligned album. It might be the be the song on ‘GATS that most closely points to the barely contained rage and dangerous cadence that they’d explore more on ‘THB’. I’ve never seen it live, because they probably last played it in mid-1993. I want it. Give it to me.
[*PLEASE REMOVE THIS – ED]
[**PLEASE REMOVE THIS – ED]
It’s already just outside the top 20, you motherfuckers, and I am going to justify this bonkers classic being number one before I die (#BucketList).
When I’m this still you are my life (when I’m this still you are my life) So at ease in the midnight sky (so at ease in the midnight sky) But my insides will look like war (my insides will look like war) Paralyzed except through my thought
We finally got there, the band had never taken longer than two years between albums before but we had waited a massive three years since the band had released ‘TIMTTMY’, the album that turned them into super duper megastars. It had been two years since Billy Bragg’s questioning of the band’s toilet etiquette seemingly inspired a nuts and bolts reappraisal of what the band even meant anymore; eighteen months since they’d welcomed in the Millennium in front of nearly 75’000 fans at Cardiff’s appropriately named Millennium Stadium and then earned the first number one single of the 21st century with the none-more-punk call to arms Masses Against the Classes. We would finally get to hear the next album, ‘Know Your Enemy’ and see exactly what kind of situationist punk manifesto the band had ended up scrawling in their own blood that the last few years of high drama* had inspired.
(*the highest drama- you don’t have another man question your weeing and pooing habits and not expect it to inexorably change your whole outlook on life. Listen, mate, 9/11 hadn’t happened yet…)
To promote it, the band once again cocked a loving glance at their G’N’F’n’R influence, releasing two singles on the same day. G’N’F’n’R had released both ‘Use Your Illusions’ I & II albums on the same day back in 1991, which the band later claimed had been the original plan when they restructured ‘KYE’ into two albums in 2022. The label was, apparently, less convinced, but still, releasing two singles to compete against each other was near unheard of, at least for mainstream bands. One single, Found That Soul (Sir Not Appearing On This List), was pretty much what people were expecting – a simple but euphoric garage punk thrasher that bopped and crunched in all the right places, the sound of a band reconnecting with their earlier, rawer and rockier side. Yes, indeed. All is in order.
The other single was… this…
Up there with the strangest songs the band have ever done, and certainly the weirdest and least conventionally Manics song that they’ve seen fit to release as a single. ‘KYE’ is already a ridiculously diverse and peculiar album, yet still So Why… stands out on it for being bizarrely out of place. To be fair, it’s difficult to think of many albums by any artist that So Why… would fit happily onto. It’s a doo whop shimmy-along fed through a sentient and screaming meat grinder. It, for reasons indecipherable to us mere mortals, gives a shout out to Sonic Youth with its ‘Burns an expressway to your skull‘ line, but Thurston Moore himself would laugh until he vomited blood if you suggested releasing a song as esoteric as So Why… as your hotly anticipated new album’s lead single. In furiously and desperately grasping at how best to explain exactly what the song sounds like, many professional and amateur journalists have settled on The Beach Boys, and JDB was indeed a little obsessed with ‘Surf’s Up‘ and particularly Feel Flows at the time. But you could only imagine The Beach Boys coming up with something as batshit as So Why if they happened to take loads of drugs… erm… OK, if they took even more drugs. Or maybe no drugs at all? That’s be a cool little experiment.
And yet, the song is still an absolute majesty. Despite all the weirdness swirling in electric clouds all around the song, the band still stick to their principles and tie it to an absolutely pristine pop song. Heck, give this song Robyn to sing, give it to Britney, give it to freaking Rihanna! Corrupt the masses!! Of course, the band hate the song –
“I just thought, ‘What the fuck is this?’. I really liked the lyric, but it sounds nothing like us in any shape or form. So Why So Sad came up and for some reason deluded us into thinking that’s the most commercial and catchy thing we had and we all fell for it. And then we spent three hundred thousand pounds on the video, which is absolute tripe”
– and preferred the dull Avalanches remix on the rereleased album in 2022. And there are large swathes of the Manics’ fanbase that detest the band travelling such miles outside their comfort zone. These people are wrong. And fucking idiots. This song’s amazing.
So long, my fatal friend I don’t need this to end I re-imagine the steps you took Still blinded by your intellect
Go on, who do you think this song is about? Have a guess, come on now. Remember when I spoke about the Severn Bridge in my Ready for Drowning #66 entry, yeah? Y’know, the bridge that was likely the final destination of a Mr Richard Edwards? Someone who could viably be described as Nicky’s fatal friend, yeah? One whose intellect could almost be described as blinding, if you will? So go on, have another guess: who do you think the lead single of ‘Futurology’ was referring to?? Yeah?? You know, don’t you??
To which Nicky replies, no, dude, it’s about a completely different bridge, lolololololol
#rekd.
Yeah, according to Wire you may as well claim that the Prince song ‘All Severn and we watch them fall‘ is about Richey if you’re so desperate to find links you fucking idiot. The bridge referenced to in the song, you absolute plumb, is actually the Øresund Bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark. Once, when the band’s tour bus was returning from a festival, Nicky had seriously considered calling it a day with the band, before crossing the bridge renewed his optimism and commitment and found new belief and inspiration in the future of the band: “That bridge was phenomenal, like seeing the Pyramids or something. And I suddenly thought the capability within this thing can apply to us as a band“. So there you go, you shameless ghouls, it has nothing to do with Richey! It’s actually about something really boring!! And Nicky is, like, still blinded by the intellect of a fucking bridge, alright?!
How much of The Norway Explanation™ is simply an exasperated troll of fans and journalists is unclear. Since around roughly the 1st February 1995, the lyrics of every Wire penned Manics lyric has been pored over to excess trying to work out how many of them are direct references to Richey’s life, death and the band’s reaction to each. Honestly? You could probably make an argument for roughly around 93.206% of the songs released between 1996 and 2026 (is that… 30 years??? Fuck, I’m so old. I’m gonna be dead soon. So will you) are at least partially concerned with such an integral and traumatic period in the band’s history, and personally I’d believe you’d only be maybe a couple of percentage points out in either direction. But still it must irritate to consistently be grilled on your own personal pain, no matter how honest your intentions. Like, almost all of my songs are about that time in PE when I tried to impress my classmates with a particularly stonking fart but ended up shitting my gym shorts and having to wear the basketball gym net for the remainder of the class. Obviously. It was a troubling incident that I don’t expect many of you to fully comprehend. But I don’t want to continuously discuss the event as I still attempt to poetically come to terms with it on my twelfth album! I’ll tell journalists that the song Stinky Britches is about the Armenian Genocide, and the album closer Basketball-on-Ball Action is about… I dunno… Donald Trump or something. The Manics releasing a song called Walk Me to the Bridge is only ever going to elicit one response from people in the know, and the band must realise that. While I don’t completely reject The Norway Explanation™, Nicky must have at least seen the poetic symbolism in it. But, hey, it’s art, let’s all read into it how we want, even when the text is so freaking obviously in line with our interpretations.
The song though? DERNERNERNER! Yeah, it’s an absolute stonking hard on. DERNERNERNER! Perhaps the best utilisation of the quiet/loud dynamic in the band’s catalogue. DERNERNER-NER!
Fragments of uniforms, open black ruins A moral conscience – you’ve no wounds to show So, wash your car in your ‘X’ baseball shoes
“The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.”
Valerie Solanas, ‘SCUM Manifesto
Yeah, sorry, it’s not wall to wall radio rock bangers at this point. We still need to occasionally peer into the abyss..
“Grim, isn’t it? Why would I have come up with a title like that? Richey must have got to me by that point”
Walking... takes its title, and a lot of its bleakness, from the beyond radical S.C.U.M Manifesto (standing for ‘The Society for Cutting Up Men’), written by the beyond radical feminist Valerie Solanos, who would later shoot Andy Warhol (for… reasons… Not necessarily ideological…). However, the band refute the idea that men are responsible for all the horrors of the world. They bravely stand up against this feminazi SJW by rejecting the proposal that the responsibility for history’s atrocities lies solely in the Y chromosome. No, this is a worm in all human nature! The massacred innocent blood stains us all! Who’s responsible? You fucking are!
#Equality
Yeah, Walking… is a teensy bit dark, it’s a touch horrific, and it’s bleaker than when they turn the lights off at Bleak House. But with one of the album’s most magnificent backing tracks. JDB is just abusing those guitars, motherfucker’s beating them bloody and then attempting rough strangulation. It’s a bit kinky, actually:
“By this point I was a bit exhausted trying to pretend I had enough intelligence to cope with the subject matter. So I read the lyrics and just tried to write something mean. I went straight to my memory file and thought ‘If I can somehow have a modified version of the riff from The Light Pours Out of Meby Magazine…’. I just lengthened it, different notes and that was it”
Couple this with an extraordinarily anthemic melody an the song manages to perversely raise its head above the wreckage that its own maliciousness has caused, before turning to the camera to wink. You’ll hate yourself for it, but this song is so damn catchy. It’s an absolutely monstrous work of genius, cajoling you into happily singing along to the deepest condemnation of all of humanity. It tricks you, it lures you in, it has everyone admitting that, yes, we all are trash, we are all deficient, we are all of walking abortion, we are all responsible.
“Loser, liar, fake and phoney, no one cares, everyone is guilty, fucked up, dunno why you poor little boy! One more time!”
I’ve always found Walking… to be bizarrely… funny?? I believe the ideas and message behind the song are strongly held, but the band also realise how insanely dark these beliefs are, and the idea of packaging them into a song so irresistible that its melody would fit easily on their ‘EMG’ comeback album and have thousands of people sing along, offering loud concurrence to the song’s dismal evaluation of humanity, is just too hilarious an idea to pass over.
Also, when JDB screams back in with ‘FRAG-ments…of uniforms’? We’re all here for that, right? That’s how and why we roll? That’s our juice, that’s our cookie?
The world on your shoulders The love of your mother The fear of the future The best years behind you The world is getting older The times they fall behind you The need it still grows stronger The best years never found you
Musically, The Love of Ricard Nixon is absolutely stunning. Restrained yet infectious synths tie in into the wider sound of ‘Lifeblood’, but it’s a far darker beast than anything else on the album. Gorgeously malevolent and – as is often the case with the Manics – a complete red herring of a lead single. It absolutely oozes with malicious melody though, with the tunefulness and delivery of the “Love build around the sandy beaches/Love rains down like Vietnam’s leeches” lines in particular being worthy of a thousand ‘ChefsKiss.gif’ responses. If the song was called The Love of Lyndon B Johnson and the lyrics were exclusively about the former US president’s penis, this gorgeous song would still open our top 20.
They’re not though. The lyrics are instead a call for the former US president Richard Nixon- him of the insane paranoia and Watergate scandal- to be afforded a little more respect (“People forget China and your war on cancer”). Which… yeah… alright… It’s an interesting position to take. The song makes a lot more sense to me if you look at it calling for more nuance in evaluating people in history rather than following the tired zero sum ‘Great/Sucky Men’ narrative. Nixon was arguably a more left wing president than many of the Democratic ones who followed him, especially considering how nobody else seriously considered the introduction of a Universal Basic Income… but then he also started the absolutely evil War on Drugs while members of his staff explicitly confirmed how it was designed to target black communities then he also declined to end the Vietnam War (which at the time was the USA’s most catastrophic conflict and still remains in the top five to this day) because he thought it would help him get re-elected… So, yeah, maybe the song should have been called ‘The Complications of Richard Nixon’. Good song though, and how often do musical acts so frequently give you ‘talking points’??
A framed adolescence Steeped in the history of you Stopping the summer once for you
Experience is lost on me I am melancholia eternally But I still smile so stupidly For the first time ever I don’t understand my television
And just like that moment in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid I’m perpetually stuck in sepia film The bleeding inside, I manage to keep it all in Keep it all in
The band’s greatest b-side and – holy unwritten diaries, Batman – maybe they have always been a great b-sides band, despite what I previously said. Listen, this list is otherwise an intensely scientific study of the band’s musical evolution using maths and charts that I couldn’t possibly expect someone like you to understand – We Her Majesty’s Prisoners ended up with a score of (((2!!!x3)/0.1)/6×10^4)-(((500000/5)+2.39)/w)x10391304347x((dx10^-4)+0.175838)/200000–0.159585, so was obviously ranked slightly higher than Archives of Pain, which only received a score of 2∑n=1∞∑k=12n(−1)n+1(2π)2n(2n−k+1)!(12πi)k. But the painfully beautiful Sepia is as high as it is simply for personal reasons, reasons I probably cannot and definitely will not properly explain.
Yes, it’s a song about Richey – in a series of either 367 or 26’905 depending on how you read into later songs – but it’s the most beautifully worded and perhaps the most nakedly emotional response to his disappearance. It may even be the first time the band managed to explicitly face up to the weight of his (at the time) recent departure from a band who had always styled themselves as a Gang of Four. Musically, the song isn’t an instant classic, with a more subtle and disarmingly breezy, weightless feel that hides the inner anguish of the lyrics. Those lyrics though – lordy lou those lyrics! – are perhaps the greatest of the ‘EMG’ era (it was the b-side of the #22 entrant), and maybe, just maybe, might be the greatest lyrics that Nick Wire has ever penned solo*. It catches Nicky in an especially vulnerable position soon after Richey’s disappearance, where for the first time the band were mentioned on the proper news and Wire doesn’t even understand his TV. It’s an achingly affecting celebration of a loving friendship, and the line “No, you never kissed me, never felt anything for me” hits hard, as well as simply screaming for deeper discussion
(*although apparently our #7 entry might have been penned almost or completely exclusively by Wire, and that lyric is pretty fucking untouchable)
The chorus’s mention of ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ (which on paper really shouldn’t scan, but totally works) references the final scene of the movie, where BC and SK run out of hiding to apparent certain death, only for the screen to pause and then fade into sepia, the real endings of our two heroes forever ambiguous. Nicky links this to how he feels his story with Richey is now put on hold, the two of them perpetually (the way JDB delivers that one word will cause dangerous explosions in your undergarments.Per-pet-you-ah-lee…) stuck in some kind of limbo, with the true resolution a mystery perhaps forever. 30 years on… yeah… it was a good shout. JDB’s vocal performance absolutely elevates the song as well, being one of the few people on Earth who could truly understand the pain that Wire is describing. His screamed delivery of the line “And these unwritten diaries/That can never breathe, NEEEEEEEEE-ver breeeeeeaaathe!” is spine-collapsingly exquisite.
Sniff… No, it’s just a fly or some shit that’s got in my eye…
Most of the band turned 24 in 1993. Yeah, they were in a moderately successful rock band. Yeah, they’d achieved their teenage dreams of combining the licks of G’N’F’n’R with the politics of McCarthy. Yeah, their unique stylings had inspired a dedicated fan following. Yeah, they’d played on Top of the Pops a few times. But the fact that they even needed to record a second album was an admission of failure. 16 million albums, remember? The very existence of ‘GATS’ was the band lowering their heads in shame and morosely stepping back onto the meat grinder. Bollocks. We have to make an actual career out of this…
The sad admission that they were likely in for the long haul (Thirty. Three. Years ago) lead to them writing one of the greatest rock songs of the modern era.
Yeah, I said it. You come here for cold takes?? Move along, sister, the big girls are talking.
The band’s co-manager – to this day thank you very much – Martin Hall was convinced that the song would be number one all over the world, likening it to, erm, Maggie May by Rod Stewart. Because, well… I guess because he was really old? But why wouldn’t it be that big?? Despair… is the sound of the band making a Faustian pact with popular culture, recording a track they believed would best align the band’s ambitions with commercial rock radio. And they fucking nailed it so hard that they made similar attempts made recently by Metallica on their 1991 self-titled album look amateur by comparison. That Metallica album eventually sold, wait for it, sixteen million copies (seriously), and Despair… was the song that was going to indisputably offer the band seats at that same table.
An absolute rock beast, that sees Sean Moore making up for lost time (all his drum parts were done by a machine on the first album) by absolutely stealing the show by hitting those drums and snares like he fucking hates them. Containing an ounce of subtlety – which marks it out on the same album that contains Nostalgic Pushead (#21) and Symphony of Tourette (Sir Not Appearing On This List). Richey’s lyrics were heavily influenced by the Joy Division song From Safety to Where, while the rest of the band were more thinking of The Faces’ True Blue, a concoction of influences that you’re just never going to get with any other band. Add in a brutally great quiet/loud dynamic, which the band have always utilised better than any band not called Pixies, and the song becomes one of the most thrilling three minutes and thirty four seconds anyone’s likely to experience outside entering an especially euphoric subspace after a particularly draining session with, that’s right, your Mum. As part of the pact, the band toned down the politics and the sloganeering of the first album and instead wrote an introspective classic that even Fred in accounts would be able to relate to. Then there’s strings. Strings!
Despair… is the band grasping that brass ring so hard that their palms bleed, and at last finally being considered proper rock royalty.
The song reached #25 in the UK charts. Fuck these noise, thought the band, let’s make an album about anorexia and the Holocaust. Oh, and supporting the death penalty! Then we’ll get the respect we deserve!
“A lot of bands would have just buckled at that point. But we kept digging! We dug so far we reached hell”
They drag sticks along your walls Harvest your ovaries dead mothers crawl Here comes warden, Christ, temple, elders Environment not yours you see through it all
Want to get out won’t miss you sensaround Carry your own dead to swing your tire tricks Want to get out in here you’re bred dead quick For the outside The small black flowers that grow in the sky
Here chewing your tail is joy
Back to 1996, back to Richey Edwards, Back to a song that could this time be read as an epitaph on his career with the band. Y’know, if you were into that kind of stuff. Back to absolute un-fucking-impeachable beauty. Back to reality, ope, there goes gravity.
Back in the 90s, my best friend (to this day) asked me what Small Black Flowers… was about. When I told him it was about zoo animals. Before I even got to bore on about the obvious links to Richey’s own mental state, he replied:
Fucking hell, they complain about everything, don’t they??
Dum. Dum-dum (diddle-ee). Dum. Dum-dum (diddle-ee). Dum. Dum-dum (diddle-ee). Daka-dak, daka-dak, dak-daka-dak. Sing along people in the back.
After Richey left, the band needed a new theme song. All of a sudden, Lennon getting shot barely mustered a smile, and the band were really in two minds over whether rock and roll would have to be violently dismantled. The title track and necessarily the central statement of the most unlikely of comebacks set it all on the line both lyrically and musically. The song is a breathtaking piece of bombast, with an excess of strings and production that sounds like it was recorded in the Large Hadron Collider creating perhaps the band’s most awe inspiring moment. And – in a line repeated so often I feel dirty even saying it now- the best Bond theme that never was.
The lyrics were, for better or worse, a huge signifier of the direction Nicky was largely going to be taking in the future as the band’s chief scribe. Allusions to moving on, accepting change, how things will never be the same, heavy references to Richey and light references to wider societal issues , but generally vague enough to interpret your own meaning (“I look to the future it makes me cry/But it seems too real to tell you why”). Because of the context and circumstances, you could only read it as a comment on the band wanting to move on from their past (Nicky Wire once said, rather more succinctly, that it was telling the fans “If you didn’t like it, fuck off”*) and be “Freed from the memory/Escape from our history” (HIS-TO-RAAAY!!! Another exemplar JDB performance), which is kind of funny considering that songs about being in the Manics in the 90s make up roughly 48% of all their tracks over the next 25 years.
(*annoyingly, I didn’t source that quote when I wrote this article in 2021, which has happened a couple of times. Ah well, it just means I have to search the web for the quote. But when I do, it comes up with literally one result. That 2021 article I wrote. I’m keeping it in though, because he definitely said it at one point, didn’t he?? Let me know if you can find it)
A bit of love for Sean Moore. Often the forgotten Manic, he was never at the front spouting revolutionary bile in the early days, he spent the ‘GATS’ era dressed and acting like Silent Bob, he spent the ‘THB’ era in a little beret that just made him look adorable, and to to this day he will always sit silently behind JDB and Nicky Wire and let them comment on whatever it is he’s supposed to be doing these days. His near reclusive status has, obviously, lead to a certain section of Manics fandom getting ever so obsessed with him. Apparently he’s really into his guns and shooting, so would have really been behind the ‘fuck the brady Bill’ sentiments of ifwhiteamerica… at #46. I heard, yeah, that he owns two houses next door to each other, one for himself and one for his wife, which… I can… sympathise with… It’s been widely accepted that Shawn the Sheep is a thinly veiled biography. I also hear that he’s the cousin’s friend that Nicki Minaj was referencing, as he did indeed plan to marry in Trinidad before his testicles inflated massively due to the side affects of the COVID vaccine. To understand the impact, you have to know that, even normally, San Moore’s testicles are huge. So big that you can still find early gig reviews where the writer mistakenly thought it curious that Sean arrived on stage carrying two yoga balls below his waist. I hear that Sean Moore is officially the only white person in the world with a certified ‘N-Word Pass’, but he never uses it, because that’s the kind of guy he is. I hear that he holds the world record for a Mario Kart 64 speed run on Rainbow Road. He’s, like, five full seconds ahead of the person in second place. Astonishing stuff.
Some of those were true. Maybe. You just don’t know with Sean, it’s like making assumptions on the social life of the Chinshakiangosaurus. We’re never going to get confirmation.
However, outside his marital arrangements and his enormous testicles, what I really wanted to appreciate here is the guy’s drumming. Absolutely in the conversation when you’re talking of the greatest rock drummers of all time, Sean’s explosive talents elevate so many Manics songs, providing impeccable bases for the songs to be built upon and playing an essential part in the oomph that characterises all the bands’ greatest songs. Everything…might be his crowning achievement, aided by a amazingly vast engineering by Ian Grimble that makes every drum hit sound like it’s a boulder dropping into an empty theatre, it’s an astonishingly complex but nevertheless stirring performance that could either be to celebrate the winning of World War 3 or to warn of impending destruction. The song is a rare Manics track that doesn’t really push guitars to the fore, instead allowing the string and drums to take centre stage, and Sean relishes the opportunity to blow the listener away.
Did I mention the trumpet playing? Yeah, that’s him on #22 Kevin Carter. Is there anything this polymath can’t do?
Let us overcome our endless progress Art is never modern for art is eternal When every single day you’re haunted by perfection Paintings are never finished but merely abandoned
Black Square is astonishing. The gracious and yet aggressive beating and bloodied heart of the entire ‘Futurology’ album, referencing themes of failed strives for perfection and the apparent contradiction of the importance of that endeavour nonetheless. Shit, referencing themes that have been at the band’s core their whole career. “Let us wipe the slate clean let us dig our own graves/Let us choose our own wars and make our own mistakes” could have been an unused verse of Stay Beautiful (#41). And, this being the Manics, they do so by referencing/quoting Austrian expressionist painter Egon Schiele, French philosopher Paul Valéry and the Russian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich, whose collection of paintings of black squares on white canvases, in protest of the stifling restrictions on Russian artistic expression at the time, is one of seminal works of abstract art and gives the song its title.
Black Square isn’t just setting homework and further reading though (even if that’s what the best Manics songs should always do), it’s one of the album’s and the band’s most experimental and musically ingenious songs, yet still understands the simple power of a killer chorus. If you’ve never heard the song, you’re extremely lucky to just be introduced to it, and if you’ve heard it before I can guarantee that you’ve forgotten how fucking amazing it is.
I choose, my choice, I starve to frenzy Hunger soon passes and sickness soon tires Legs bend, stockinged I am Twiggy And I don’t mind the horror that surrounds me
Self worth scatters, self esteems a bore I long since moved to a higher plateau This discipline’s so rare, so please applaud Just look at the fat scum who pamper me so
Yeah, 4st 7, an epilogue of youth Such beautiful dignity in self abuse I’ve finally come to understand life Through staring blankly at my navel
Alright, alright stop screaming at the back, I’ll get to the fucking lyrics in a second, calm down. Are you really that desperate to hear this sad old pathetic fanboy add another take upon the burning piles of reactions to what must be one of the most overanalysed and discussed lyrics in British rock history??
Even if the lyrics were “One, two, three, four, five/It’s an eating disorder, so come on, let’s ride/I like Karen, Kate, Emma and Ryvita/See my third rib appear so you know they getting sweeter”, 4st 7lb would still be one of the band’s greatest ever songs. Musically, it not only sounds quite unlike anything else in the band’s’ canon, but pretty much unlike any other song ever recorded. The stabbing, relentless guitar belies the perverted optimism of the music, like a Britney Spears anthem to female empowerment performed by a malfunctioning sex robot refusing to acknowledge that its lower body had been torn off and it was rapidly losing functions as a result of massive oil loss. And every description you attempt will soon be rendered redundant, as the song completely changes its tempo, mood and atmosphere roughly every sixty seconds, leading up to the huge twist around two thirds of the way through where the song turns into a grotesque rock ballad and slowly… staggers… to a halt…as the walls close in and the song itself seems to attempt to recklessly carry on despite the world collapsing around it. Shit, 4st 7lb doesn’t even need lyrics, it’s so musically accomplished that the sheer horror of delusion is seeped into every chord.
It’s music that necessitates a powerful lyric, so it’s nice of Richey to step up with perhaps the most powerful, disturbing and intellectually confrontational lyric he ever wrote. Yes, even including those ones about the Holocaust and the death penalty. Even on ‘The Hoy effing Bible’, 4st 7lb is the centrepiece where all hope goes to die, where all optimism is shown to be the deluded cries of an extremely sick person. It’s from the viewpoint of a woman (young girl? Teenager?) suffering from the same anorexia nervosa that Richey suffered from, laying out the ways/weighs in which she believes she is successfully managing to control her body and reach purity. Her attempts to ‘Walk in the snow/and not leave a footprint’. The young woman is not just attempting to lose weight in order to imitate the Kates (Moss) and Kristens (McMenamy) of the world, she wants to lessen her very existence (“I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view”), to accept all consequences on her road to what she believes is perfection.
“There’s a certain misconception that it must be hard to sing these lyrics. Obviously, Richey’s involved in the subject, but not as much as you think at this point. I knew he was getting a lot of – what would we call it? – the poetry of vanity, I suppose, from peple with bulimia, people with anorexia, and he’s well into his own personal battle with eating and vanity. But in our perception, he’s not anorexic at this point. He’s still having a meal in front of us now and again. He’s not as involved in the subject matter.
So singing this, I’m thinking this is a brilliant observation of somebody else. The responsibility is on the person that’s written the lyric. So it’s not that hard”
The lyrics from her viewpoint even reject that this is even a bad thing. Sure, her cheeks are sunken, her skin is “Stretching taut, cling film on bone”, her stomach’s collapsed, her vision’s blurry, but such self-control has lead her to a “higher plateau”, there’s “Such beautiful dignity in self abuse”. There are references to the sort of perverted vanity that Richey would come back to again and again in his lyrics (see the next song), but there’s also a disturbing respect for the person being written about. It can easily be read as a borderline sick appreciation of the protagonist’s stance, that she is a Bobby Sands figure willing to go through such crushing pain in order to doggedly uphold her beliefs. The final lines which I quoted a the start of this piece puts aside all the horror that we’ve encountered to finally have the girl say “Hey, you gotta respect this hustle though, no?? #GirlBoss“.
Disturbing, endlessly debatable, absolutely unparalleled in rock music, and a stone cold fucking masterpiece. But, erm, yeah, here’s a list of UK helplines if you think you might be suffering from an eating disorder.
Haven’t shaved for days Keeps the appearance of delay The luxury of one more dye Pretend humility, the ugly lie I would prefer no choice One bread, one milk, one food, that’s all I’m confused, I only want one truth I really don’t mind being lied to
I’ve probably just about milked all of the lols possible out of the ‘Journal for Plague Lovers’ album already, a record not previously noted for being a particular lolcow. All is Vanity is the album’s highlight, and to me probably the most underrated and undervalued piece of musical genius in the band’s entire back catalogue.
It’s an absolute rock stomper musically, that manages to combine pummeling and enraged guitar stabs with one of the most infectious melodies you’re likely to ever hear. If you ever catch me looking off into the middle distance, obviously enjoying a nice hit of disassociation from the general horror of day to day life, just know that in my head I’m whistling the melody to “It’s not what’s wrong! It’s what’s right! Makes me feel like I’m talking a foreign language sometimes!”
The song is elevated to genius by one of my favourite ever rock lyrics, which manages to combine mental frailty and link it to support for Communism in a truly challenging and uncomfortable way. Now I’m a full member of the Greater Manchester Communist Party branch, and proud of it. I’m as big a fan of Communism as any right thinking person (well, not right thinking, but you get what I mean). But All is Vanity makes me question the reasoning behind that, and if yearning for such a system is really a desire to have full autonomy taken away from me. Maybe frustration with the consumerism inherent in Capitalism isn’t merely about the paradox of choice, or the illusion of democracy, it’s about having any choice at all. Perhaps a yearning for this sort of system of social organisation comes from a desire for the responsibility of a locus of control to be exported. Which I… kinda… see… Maybe there are choices that I simply don’t want to make. Just give me one bread, one milk, one food. Let me concentrate on the important things in my life. Like finishing this freaking blog post.
Given the ridiculous schisms widening up between the correct left and the absolutely dumb right in 2026, is it more important to have your side ‘win’, or that we just all agree to accept one ‘truth’? There are plenty of people already (come on, let’s not mess about, definitely one one side rather than the other) that don’t mind being lied to as long as it solidifies their already held views. Wouldn’t we be happier if we weren’t so divided? Is free speech overrated, actually just a tool for creating division?
Fuck, this song only has 16 lines. And three of those are “It’s a fact of life, sunshine”.
Circle the wagons, we’re under attack We’ve realized there’s no going back We’ve realized there’s no going back
Slowly inching up the top ten is the gorgeous Synths ‘n’ Sadness opener to the once ridiculously undervalued now a teensy bit overrated ‘LB’ album. I think/hope we’re at a point now when 1985 is just widely accepted as one the band’s absolute all-timers, and people now have to justify not listing it among their own personal best ever. Well, it’s official now: 9th.
And the highest ranking song from the 21st century (!) if you were wondering what era of Manics fan I generally am.
It acts as a great companion piece to Everything Must Go, just with the bombast scaled out to more elegiac levels, the strings replaced by synths, and the lyrics both far more specific and far more… sigh… mournful. Hey, remember being young?, Nicky asks, Have I ever wrote a song about that before?
Lyrically it combines different references to events happening around the time – such as Torvill and Dean winning gold at the 1984 Winter Olympics, the music of The Smiths and, obviously, the Miners’ Strike (“The Civil War failed, why?… See all the tears, for the walking dead”) – while also referencing some notable event that lead to Nicky “Losing all that I had” and the the band “realised there’s no going back”. The Manic Street Preachers would form in 1986, in a explicit reaction to this changing political climate. Hey! I thought you were all escaped from your memory and freed from your history?! What gives?!
Musically, 1985 is a sweeping and gorgeous piece, dramatic and stirring without needing to go ‘full James Bond’. Bringing in influences as unexpected as This is Not America by David Bowie and the Pat Metheny Group; Kissing the Pink’s The Last Film; and finally perfecting everything with the icy sheen of Atmosphere. It’s as forward thinking and experimental musically as the lyrics are nostalgic and fixated on the past. It’s musically perfect, the perfect opener for the ‘LB’ album, and a near enough perfect song.
For sale? Dumb cunts, same dumb questions Oh, virgins? Listen, all virgins are liars, honey And I don’t know what I’m scared of or what I even enjoy Dulling, get money, but nothing turns out like you want it to
And in these plagued streets of pity, you can buy anything For 200, anyone can conceive a God on video He’s a boy, you want a girl, so tear off his cock Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want
I eat and I dress and I wash and I still can say thank you Puking, shaking, sinking, I still stand for old ladies Can’t shout, can’t scream, hurt myself to get pain out
You can buy her, you can buy her. This one’s here, this one’s here, this one’s here, and this one’s here. Everything’s for sale
The opening track of ‘The Holy Bible’. Oh, what’s that? You thought we were done peering into the darkest hole in the pit of humanity?? HA! You might have merely adopted the dark while reading this list; but ‘The Holy Bible’ was born in it, moulded by it! ‘The Holy Bible’ didn’t see the light until roughly track ten (#74)!, By then it was nothing to ‘The Holy Bible’ but BLINDING! The shadows betray you, because they belong to ‘The Holy Bible’!
Yes is something else entirely. I may have played up the darkness in the intro, mostly because I’m always aware of how sexy I’m likely to come across if I quote Bane from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (the coolest Batman film), when in fact (musically) the song covers a wide breadth of tone and emotion. As unbelievable as it might sound when considering the song’s themes (or if you’ve taken a little peek at those lyrics that opened this entry), Yes often comes across as one of the lighter tracks on the album. If you listened it solely for the music and melody, you’d hear a somewhat cheery guitar line, an absolutely explosive quiet/loud dynamic, impressive time signatures and thrilling buzzsaw guitars. Not Pharrell Williams’s Happyby any stretch, but hardly the industrial brain grinder that so much of the following album descends into. It was even considered as the album’s fourth single before the thing that happened happened. Which would decree the removal of a hefty amount of ‘fucks’ and ‘cunts’, admittedly, but speaks to how weirdly radio friendly the song almost is. I mean, it’s still really fucking weird, but not traumatically so.
The lyrics too might be bleak (Oh-ho-ho! Are they ever fucking bleak!), but the text is actually straightforward and its surface meaning is extremely simple to understand. While songs like Of Walking Abortion (#18) and Archives of Pain (#26) might necessitate much further reading to grasp (if any of us fully understand it), and Ifwhiteamerica… (#46) introduces roughly 72 references a line that you might only catch 10% of, Yes is maybe the simplest lyric on the album to unpack. I mean, you might have to know that ‘T’ stands for ‘Toss off’ to fully appreciate the line “I T them, 24/7 all year long”, but other than that you’re pretty much good to go!! Inspired by the grim 1993 documentary ‘Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and their John’s, and also a couple of pieces in the British press including one in (and you’ll like this) The Mail on Sunday, Yes is about… well…
Come one, you know what it’s about, don’t make me blush. The interesting morsels lie in the subtext! Is it a metaphor for good old capitalism, a system the band have enjoyed punching holes in since their earliest days? In the Holy Bible tour program, Richey introduces the song by stating that “The majority of your time is spent doing something you hate to get something you don’t need” (or as the song says: “There’s no part of my body that has not been used”). The song could be read as simply a far more graphic and sickening take on the same topics breached on the band’s classic #6 entry, about the centrality of money and ‘purchase power’ insidiously crawling into every aspect of life until it’s the only thing that matters. There’s also the duel meaning that the band themselves are both the prostitutes and the clients in this scenario, that they are both the ones who had reached a level where they could do whatever they wanted to their listeners/fanbase (as the album would prove) and also that they were the ones prostituting themselves to the music media attention that they’d always inspire. It’s also more centrally to do with Richey, him absolutely prostituting his darkest thoughts and feelings like offering an open wound to the press/fans to dig into. And how it’s funny that people seem to want to act like they car, now he’s too far gone to save.
“Funny place for the social, for the insects to start caring/Just an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff”.
JBD can rarely bring himself to sing the “I hurt myself to get pain out” line when performing the song live.
I see liberals I am just a fashion accessory People send postcards And they all hope I’m feeling well I retreat into self-pity, it’s so easy Where they patronise my misery
A piece of absolute wonder. Perhaps the most spectacularly cohesive and technically astounding rock song the band have ever done. The title is taken from the apparent last words of Vincent van Gogh and roughly translate to something along the lines of ‘The sadness continues’ or ‘The sadness endures’ or even “The sadness will never go/Will never go away/Baby it’s here to stay”. That sadness ain’t goin’ anywhere, Shagger Vince was basically trying to say. While that reference (in this largely Nicky penned lyric) might be an early sign of how more important a role art and artists would play in the band’s lyrics*, the song itself is from the perspective of an aging war veteran who now just finds himself “A cenotaph souvenir”. The empty and self-congratulatory ‘respect’ that’s given to our war veterans really mean nothing when they are forced to sell off their own medals just to be able to pay the bills**. If Life Becoming A Landslide (#25) warned of life peaking at birth, La Tristesse… makes sure you realise there’s no recompense in old age. It’s an absolutely gorgeous, concise and brilliant lyrics. Yeah, make your own links to the band themselves after they’d spaffed everything they had on their debut album, if you want. It’s a free country.
(*there are hundreds of examples, but see Black Square (#12), International Blue (#35), Interiors (Song for Willem de Kooning) (#75), My Guernica (#93), His Last Painting (#96), This Is an Art Attack (#104) and Can You Tell What it is Yet?(#523). They rarely play that last one live these days, bit problematic
**or, as JDB sings it: “I sold ma me-duls, it paid a Be-YELL!”)
Musically, La Tristesse… really earns its stripes, and is easily among the most complex (yet widely accessible) pieces of pop/rock the band have ever done. It starts with mostly just JDB and a infectious bassline, before it builds up. And up. And up. Woodblocks are thrown in, then pianos, until the song ends up an astounding burst of joy that belies its comprehensively down beaten lyrics. Part of its everlasting charm is that it is also perhaps the band’s greatest piece as a complete unit. Sean’s drums are astonishingly powerful when they want to be, but gorgeously restrained when needed. JDB’s vocal performance is one of his greatest ever (featuring some of his all time best strange enunciations) and his guitar is certified Rock God levels. Nicky contributes his greatest bassline up to that point, forming the backing of what many would refer to as ‘the last great baggy song’. And Richey… erm… No, he’s there as well! Those power chords on the first chorus? That’s him! Making La Tristesse… the other song that Richey contributed to musically.
Wow. I’ve never been happier at an old person living in misery since Thatcher died.
Life lies a slow suicide Orthodox dreams and symbolic myths From feudal serf to spender This wonderful world of purchase power
Just like lungs sucking on air Survivals natural as sorrow, sorrow, sorrow
Honestly, I was today years old when I realised it wasn’t ‘symbolic mayhem‘ or ‘From feudal serf to splendour‘. Jesus, James, learn to fucking enunciate correctly, yeah?
Despite the fact that the band seemed to represent the greatest party welcoming the oncoming apocalypse, being in the Manics in their early years wasn’t always a lot of fun. They would be playing to half empty pubs to laddish crowds loudly demanding that this bunch of effeminate ponces throw on some baggy shirts and play Waterfall. They weren’t taken seriously by the wider press, who generally refused to consider this collection of slogan bathed Barbie dolls as any more legitimate than Sigue Sigue Sputnik. They were obviously some crass comedy band taking away essential coverage from Crowded House and the The Housemartins (we were big into ‘house’ music in the early 90s). They were not only mocked for their heritage – because, unbelievably, the idea of a band being Welsh at the time was still laughable – but forced away from the only place they’d known their entire lives and forced to mainly live in fucking London. Everyone hates London. I know that the people who actually live there like to pretend they don’t, but that’s only because they’ve been victim of horrendous gaslighting on a near genocidal scale. Sad, really.
The band never let it grind them down though. They always knew that they had Motorcycle Emptiness in their back pocket. They knew they had an unquestionable classic ready to unleash at any time.
Soon…
Go Buzz Baby Go (eugh…) and Behave Yourself Baby (euuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh…) were two early – pre-Richey even – Manics demos that were way back from when they were obviously still in their ‘baby’ phase. They were both – and I want to be as polite as possible here- absolute fucking pish. Buzz Baby… had something about it, admittedly, but Behave… might be up there with the most offensively horrendous pieces of music that the band ever dared record. Honestly? I’d prefer to listen to You Stole the Sun From My Heart*. They didn’t realise at the time that they were assembling the blocks for their first legitimate entry into the rock canon. The band took pieces of these early piles of trash, added one of the greatest guitar line of all time (neeeer noo. Niddle-niddle neeeer noo. Diddle-iddle-diddle-iddle-diddle-iddle-diddle-iddle!), and ended up with an undisputable all time classic, the absolute unarguable proof of the band’s singular talent, very much their own Sweet Child O’ Mine(only, y’know, better), and it showed that – despite the band’s protestations to the contrary – they were here to motherfucking stay.
(*OK, I’m exaggerating here for comic effect, but Behave YourselfBaby is still really bad)
Because most people hadn’t heard their early, far more complex and technicality proficient b-sides such as We Her Majesty’s Prisoners (#23) or the Heavenly version of Spectators of Suicide (#24), as soon as the debut album was released containing this seemingly impossible step up artistically many immediately claimed that Motorcycle… couldn’t possibly be from the same doofuses responsible for the disrespectfully light hearted Slash ‘N’Burn (#28). Bleats of ghost writers and industry plants were dribbled out by the same horrendously serious music appreciators who threw a similar shit fit when it was revealed that Richey’s guitar was never actually plugged in when they played live. To be honest, there was slightly more truth to the accusations than the band and their fans would probably be willing to admit – that ‘ghost writer’ was JDB, for whom Motorcycle… is an early calling card and proof of his effervescent talents. He was the only band member to play on the record (though Sean programmed the drum machine and would have no problem replicating it live), taking over Nicky’s bass parts and (cough) “Richey’s” rhythm parts to ensure decent quality. It would take another six months after the album’s release before the band would feel confident enough to play the song live. Richey had learned his air guitar poses down to a motherfucking T by that point.
I don’t want cause I just get, All your slut heroes offer is a fear of the future, Past made useless cause I’m dying now, Communal tyranny, a jail that bleeds our wrists.
Motown, Motown junk I laughed when Lennon got shot, Twenty one years of living and nothing means anything to me.
Motown junk a lifetime of slavery, Songs of love echo underclass betrayal, Stops your heart beating for one to ten seconds, Stops your brain thinking for one to ten seconds,
Yeah, that was as especially long lyric quote to open this piece, but I’m more concerned about not including every single one of the 35 lines of this undisputable and singular punk rock classic. They are all absolute killers. This is the Manics’ calling card, their theme tune, their furious yet joyful call to arms and statement of intent. It wasn’t technically their debut single (it followed the kinda crappy and kinda Richeyless Suicide Alley and the kinda awesome but kinda amateur New Art Riot EP) but it was their first on a semi-proper label (Heavenly) and their first song where they properly worked out what this band would sound like and what it would be about. Motown… is the sound of a band hitting on lightning in a bottle early on and realising that they desperately needed to lay out their whole manifesto and their whole philosophy in this 225 seconds of absolute genius that they’d unexpectedly fallen into. Motown… Not 168 seconds though. Which is, yeah, bit of a missed open goal.
Motown…is the sound of a band that doesn’t believe they’ll ever get a chance to record a song ever again, so wanted to make sure they aggressively booted this one opportunity out if the park. It might be why it remains in the bands’ setlist thirty five years later, the band looking back after a long and successful career on a moment when they had no idea if they’d be back to Blackwood the next day so wanted to absolutely blitz every. Single. Second.
Even the cover – a depiction of a watch forever stopped by the bomb on Hiroshima – seemed to chime with the general feeling that this was everything, that it was all going to end soon so the band may as well take the opportunity to remind you that all your slut heroes offer is a fear of the future (whoo-ah-hoo). They live in urban hell, they destroy rock and roll.
The song remains a standard to this day, with the band commenting that when/if they finally get bored of playing this era-defining classic live they’ll know that it might be time to pack it all if. However, JDB has long chosen not to sing the wonderfully edgelord lyric “I laughed when Lennon got shot”, occasionally replacing Lennon’s name with Reagan (also good, two thumbs up from me), but more often just cutting the line short to ‘I laughed’.
I wish I had a bottle Right here in my dirty face To wear the scars To show from where I came
Whatever happens in the next thirty years of the band’s career (album number 37 is an bit of a banger, but album number 53 absolutely stinks), this will always be the the central point of their career from which all else is derived. If you’ve ever heard of the Manic Street Preachers, the underlying reason is almost definitely this song. The only possibly understandable reason you might have for not liking this British rock centrepiece is that you’ve heard it roughly 64’908’403 times. In the past week. It’s played on Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, 5 Live, 6 Music, Capital FM, Kiss 103, Smooth North West, Gaydio and MDZhB. It soundtracked your visit to Waitrose and was the hold music when you rang Stoke City Council to complain about the bin collections. I think the fact that the son is ubiquitous might have lead many of us to both take its inherent fabulousness for granted, and also stop appreciating just how shocking it was that a band like this became ubiquitous at this time!
Richey hadn’t been since February 1995. This strange cult band, who had recently released one of the most perverted and uncommercial subversion of rock music imaginable, were suddenly tragically separated from their ‘Minister of Propaganda’, the chief reason behind their previous cult status, and the assumed central figure behind all of their previous artistry. This was it, surely?
It’s important to stress that, at this point, the Manics really weren’t that big a deal. Sure, they’d always had the Legacy Fans, but it was unclear in early 1996 if any of them would bother with a Richeyless Manics pathetically trundling on. The music press used to really like them, but the coverage had begun to trail off markedly once the band weren’t just a bunch of bozos trying to hype their debut album with incendiary statements and instead changed to more of a mournful and hyper literate group that sang about abortions. Their albums never sold great numbers, their only UK to 10 single was their balls out Slashified cover of the Theme from M*A*S*H back in 1992.That time they explosively penetrated the rock canon with Motorcycle Emptiness? Yeah, number 16. That was about as good as it got. Sad news about Richey lads, sure, but there’s not really much point in you carrying on now, is there? The band themselves would have felt the same way.
Until one day Wire was inspired by the ‘Knowledge is Power’ inscription above the entrance of the Pillgwenlly library roughly 15 miles away from the band’s hometown of Blackwood. “Libraries gave us power”. The next line was obvious for anyone associated with the Manics – you’ve gotta bring it back to the Holocaust, don’t you?? Another famous inscription above an entrance, this time to the Auschwitz concentration camps.’ Arbeit macht frei‘: work sets you free. “Then work came and made us free”. The Manics had always been working class, most of the band were children of miners and their background inspired their radically socialist viewpoints. But they’d never previously written a song about being working class. The message was always more important, rather than the credentials of the people writing/singing it. Nicky wrote one of the great celebrations/laments of the working class, focused not on the people themselves but more on the backdated and dangerous assumptions of the working class by those lucky enough to be able to afford their own pet foxes to shoot. ‘We don’t talk about love/We only want to get drunk’. In the forthcoming motion picture about the band’s life, Nicky (played by Adam Driver) would burst into JDB’s (played by Tom Hardy) room with a scrawled and ripped piece of paper.
“James! You gotta read this, man, I think I’ve just written our comeback single!”
JDB/Tom Hardy would be lying morosely in his bed, cigarette hanging out of his mouth as he stares blankly at the ceiling. He shakes his head when Nicky enters the room.
“Nicky, it’s over” JDB/Hardy says as he slowly moves to a sitting position and stubs out the cigarette in one of the many empty beer bottles surrounding his bed “We can’t do it without Richey. I’ve not even piked up my guitar in 12 months”
Nicky/Driver furrows his brow and angrily pushes the sheet of paper into JDB/Hardy’s face.
“Just, read it!”
JDB/Hardy sighs as he snatches the paper from Nicky/Driver’s hand and lights another cigarette. He rolls his eyes, he can’t believe Nicky/Driver is forcing him to do such a meaningless task, what did he want, a candy?? Then as he looks at the lyrics, his eyes begin to brighten and he begins mouthing the words in jubilation.
“Nicky” JDB/Hardy says as he stands up “Go get my guitar”
[NICKY AND JAMES KISS PASSIONATELY]
Sorry, might have overrun into my own private fanfic there…
Uncanny
While I don’t doubt that my cinematic interpretation will be 193 minutes of pure historical legitimacy (Sean Moore will be played by Rebel Wilson), what we actually know is that JDB says that when Nicky handed him the lyrics he realised how great a song he would have to write to do them justice. And, yeah, mission successful. Design… is a musical and orchestral juggernaut, with soaring strings and a guitar waltz good enough to convince the band that, hey, maybe we’ve got one more album left in us…
And it would have been a number one single if it wasn’t for – and you’ll like this – Mark Morrison’s Return of the Mack
Doctors tell me that I’m cynical I tell them that it must be chemical So, what am I doing, girl? Cry into my drink, I disappear Eyes for teeth grating over me Bring down the shadows of my mind Sleep and breathe under our sheets Inhale the anxiety in between In between In between In between
So, we arrive back at the eternal question that has plagued Manics fans for almost 25 years now: “Is Alex too hard on TIMTTMY?”
I reminisced and reread my revolutionary 2019 rereview recently, when I was reckoning whether it was ready for revaluation. And, wow, I go in pretty hard on the album. Still obviously unable to get over that moment as a late teenage boy when I felt I had been abandoned by the band I love. Now, approximately 28 years and two weeks after the record’s release, am I grown up and rational enough to detach the great emotional betrayal I felt from that album when I was a typically restrained and unemotional teenage boy?
No. No I’m not.
Well, maybe a bit…
I still stand by a lot of what I said in that review. My hatred for You Stole the Sun From My Heart is still very much in place, though I have painfully accepted the subtle beauty of The Everlasting (#79) despite its occasional lyrical crimes of humanity. I still believe that nonsense like I’m Not Working, Born a Girl and (oh God, please mummy, not this again) S.Y.M.M are among the worst excuses for songcraft the band have ever been shameless enough to release. But I was too hard on You’re Tender and You’re Tired (#92) and Black Dog on My Shoulder (#75), perhaps wanting to build a more convincing narrative of the album going off a cliff after tracks 2-6, forgetting that You Stole… is track 3 and the album’s stinkiness is more liberally spread across the whole album. An And…
…
…
Yeah, that’s it. No, this album still ain’t no good (I think that’s well understood). Will you please stop having me return to it only to come away with the exact same appraisal??
But two of the album’s singles dinishe #3 and #2 this time, so go figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tsunami is a perfect rock song. When you go to rock school, Tsunami is the final exam that you have to perfect. It’s anthemic; it’s experimental but not so much to offset the vibes of one of the greatest rock songs of the 20th century; it’s lyrics are oblique enough to just mindlessly chant along to but contain so much meaning that rewards exploration; it contains the line “Disco dancing with the rapists”; and it all hangs on an electric sitar that is maybe the most gorgeous sounding additional instrumentation in the band’s career. If this is what the band’s version of selling out sounds like, pump the Coca Cola™ into my Nestle™ sponsored iVeins™.
The lyrics, some of Wire’s best, are about June and Jennifer Gibbons (often referred to as ‘The Silent Twins’), daughters of Caribbean nationals who came to the UK as part of the ‘Windrush Generation‘ of the 1960s. Ostracised for being the only black kids in the Welsh town of Haverfordwest they eventually ended up in, and speaking a fast Bajan Creole that nobody could understand, the twins decided to lean into their outsider status. Eventually concocting a language that nobody else could understand, being arrested for petty misdemeanours and then refusing to speak at all, leading to an especially harsh eleven year stretch in Broadmoor likely linked to their refusal to speak. All the while creating fiction and plays between themselves. After Jennifer died in mysterious circumstances in 1993, June began to speak of her experience, saying that the twins had always agreed that once one of them dies the other could break the vow of silence, and June spoke in terms of Jennifer making a sacrifice so that June would be able to tell their story.
Yeah, I’m not going to bother flagging up the potential Richey references anymore, I really don’t have the time.
The future teaches you to be alone The present to be afraid and cold So if I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists
A statement we can all get behind
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand…!!
Number one single, ladies and gentlemen.
Yeah, you probably know this one.
It’s pretty astonishing that, just four years after scarring a generation with the artistically alarming and commercially laughably unfeasible ‘THB’, The Manics were number one with a single that, lyrically, didn’t really veer too far away from their classic beliefs and intentions much at all. Hey! They even mention the Fascists! You know they love mentioning the fascists!
A deep and thoughtful lyric about questioning whether you’d actually have the strength of your convictions to drop everything and go and physically fight fascism, like the Welsh farmers who joined the International Brigade in the 1930s to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Sure, we pinkie lefties love to read about anti-fascism, and we can debate anyone you want on Reddit about the true nature of protests, but do we have anywhere near the 大胆子 needed to stand up and physically fight to protect our beliefs? “Monuments put from pen to paper/Turns me into a gutless wonder”. Again, this was all in a number one single.
But, seriously, fuck the lyrics for a second, musically Tolerate… is absolutely impeccable and the large reason why the track should always be considered one of the great British rock songs. It’s technically a slow song, but it builds up to such a freaking astonishing crescendo that my mate Darren – you don’t know him, he lives in Scotland – said that simply listening to the building organ and guitar solo made his girlfriend give birth to triplets. She wasn’t even pregnant! Darren, apparently – and this is just what I heard – was also shitting himself with joy at the time. The entire second half of the song is just an emotional whirligig, gorgeously produced and arranged. The moment when JDB sings “And on the street tonight/An old man plays with newspaper cuttings of his glory days” before one last “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand’” launches us into the chorus again, is honestly one of the most spine-tingling and joyous moments in music.
And it was originally recorded as a b-side!! It was only when the signature ‘whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’ treated organ sound was added that the band realised what magic they’d happened upon. Before that, for a comeback single, the band were seriously considering – and you’ll like this – Be Natural! I mean, seriously, what the actual fuck, guys??
I mean, come on, it has to be, doesn’t it?? It was number one five years ago and – spoiler alert – it will be number one next time I do this list. I know that I have always been referred to by the French as les homme terriblede hot takés, but I can only go so far!
Faster is comfortably the greatest song that the Manics have ever released, and it may well be the greatest ever meeting of breathless rock/punk/whatever music and endlessly recitable – yet worthy of deeper reading – lyrics of all time. It’s the greatest pop song that I have ever heard. At the very least, there really isn’t another song ever that sounds quite like it. Really, another one that sounds anything like it.
I am an architect They call me a butcher I am a pioneer They call me primitive I am purity They call me perverted Holding you but I only miss these things when they leave
Perhaps the most powerful thing about Faster is how little there is to it. It’s a maximalist and furious call to arms, it aims a scream so loud into the void that there isn’t really anything else that can match up to its sheer volume and anguish. But it’s little more than sped up military drums, a low in the mix standard bassline, and one screeching guitar line. Even I can play Faster on the guitar, and I struggle to remember where to put my fingers for Come As You Are. Even the astonishing guitar solo (which JDB memorably plays in the wonderfully minimalist video while the out of place lyrics “I know I believe in nothing/But it is my nothing” are projected onto the screen) is no technical masterclass, it’s merely a furious scream at unimaginable speed. One reading of the title ‘Faster’* is that it refers to somebody fasting, i.e. massively cutting down their food intake. This would obviously chime with other tracks on ‘THB’ such as 4st 7lbs (#11), but it would also relate well to the song itself. This, the comeback single and first thing the vast majority of people will have heard from ‘THB’, was the band drastically counting their musical calories. There were no more strings, no more excessive production, that piano? Ha! No, that’s got to go. This was the band somehow stripping themselves back and managing to sound bigger than ever. They were toning their abs and managing to get to Olympic level.
(*one of the two things in the song, along with the “Man kills everything” closing lines, to have come from Wire rather than Richey)
I am idiot drug hive, the virgin, the tattered and the torn Life is for the cold made warm and they are just lizards Self-disgust is self-obsession, honey, and I do as I please A morality obedient, only to the cleansed repented
JDB has also described the title as being about “the acceleration of everything – joy, pain, death, consumerism”, which would also suit the song’s general sound, like a burning vehicle speeding helplessly out of control for four minutes as the people inside await certain annihilation. The production makes each line delivery sound like they are either barked at you from a great distance or despondently sighed close to your ear, creating the dizzying feeling that you’re not sure whether JDB is trying to make sure you hear his final important screamed message or is sadly murmuring his last words.
I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer I spat out Plath and Pinter I am all the things that you regret A truth that washes that learnt how to spell
And that final message is…
Well… Nothing, really. As oppose to everything else on the album (and 90% of anything they’ve ever released), Faster isn’t really about anything. There’s no underlying narrative to the lyrics; no specific character within whose voice we’re supposed to inhibit; there isn’t really a wider message about society (no matter how fast it’s going). I’ve always found the song… strangely uplifting… It’s accepting the things wrong about you – accepting the things extremely and dangerously wrong about you – and still shouting out to the world “Fuck all y’all! I am stronger than Mensa, (Henry) Miller and (Norman) Mailer! I motherfucking spat out (Sylvia) Plath and (Harold) Pinter!!”
Except, you’re not really shouting that out to the world. You’re shouting it to yourself.
The first time you see yourself naked you cry Soft skin now acne, foul breath, so broken He loves me truly this mute solitude I’m draining I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing
Faster is a perverted song about self-acceptance. Perverted in how it chooses to deliver that message by taking onboard all the things people say about you, wallowing in the unavoidable hideousness of life, and then by ridiculously overcompensating in your own self-belief. You know that self-belief is laughably overstated though; you know that simply stating that you’re stronger than Mensa/Miller/Mailer means next to nothing when you are acutely aware of how you’re simply an idiot drug hive and a virgin tattered, torn. You know how ridiculous you’re being, but far better to be ridiculous than to simply surrender yourself to the horror. Self disgust may well be self-obsession, but you do as you please…
Sleep can’t hide the thoughts splitting through my mind Shadows aren’t clean, false mirrors too many people awake If you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down I’ve been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else
Isn’t that where depression comes from? Being honest with yourself? How could anyone possibly be OK with the world that surrounds us? How could you weigh up the situations that relate to both your capitalist entrapment and to the literal billions of people around the world who aren’t even as lucky as you are and come out of it OK? Faster is a song that laughs at the insanity, that cries out to the world “Wait… Are you really all OK with all this??” while crying at itself how insane it must be not to be alright. It’s a wondrous self-actualising anthem that, honestly, brings me to tears with its unrestrained glory and misguided self-belief.
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
It really is that damn easy to cave in, isn’t it? I won’t. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.
Many have. But I won’t…
Oh my God! We’re done!! I think I managed to add 20’000 words this time! Feel free to complain repeatedly once again about Little Baby Nothing not being included in the comments. Hey, even the fucking Everlasting made it this time, so anything’s possible in 2031. I’m in no way promising another one in five years – life happens a lot, so it might be a ten year anniversary next time. Or I might die? You might not appreciate how sick I am, but trust me when I say I could die quite easily at any time. Fun!
And once again I do seriously want to hear about the songs I’ve stupidly left off. Also, thanks so much to Simon Price for influencing pretty much everything I’ve ever written on the Manics; to Manic Street Preachers: A Critical Discography and Manic Street Preachers Song-by-Song for providing little titbits on songs I couldn’t for the fucking life of me think what to write for, and of course for the newly released Sacred Manics text 168 Songs of Hatred and Failure.
. I’ll write a statistical breakdown of the chart eventually, but maybe not until 2027 due to my standard end of year nonsense. But for now…
