Stitches and Wounds, Doctored Divinity: Manic Street Preachers’ 100 Greatest Songs (2026 Edition)

Hello! It’s us again!

*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Manics Discourse that is constantly firing back in forth in my brain*, and the list is already looking dangerously out of date.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.

If you don’t have time for the next almost fifty thousand words, here’s the Spotify playlist and here’s all the songs in order on YouTube.

And, er, you might wanna bookmark this page – motherfucker’s gonna be long. Your next 500 trips to the toilet are sorted.

Continue reading →

Love Their Mess and Adore Their Failures: Manic Street Preachers’ 100 Greatest Songs

Sep 27, 2021May 3, 2025 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 29 Comments

Right, holy shit, so am I actually doing this…?

The Manic Street Preachers are the greatest rock band ever. That’s not an opinion, it’s a conclusion that I’ve reached and am now saying it loudly and not listening to any dissenting voices, which in 2021 counts as a ‘fact’.

Their greatness is… complicated… and not easy to explain in a simple intro to a blog post… These 100 tracks aren’t necessarily the greatest songs ever. Even as a pathetically dedicated Manics stan*, even I would argue that they’ve only ever released one indisputable, stone cold classic record from front to back (see if you can guess which one after you read the list!). They may have supernatural control over melodies and how best to ensure a chorus hits just there, but at the end of the day they’re just a rock band. They have never really challenged the very boundaries of music, never pushed things forward or necessarily introduced anything new sonically. I would argue that only one of their albums is truly challenging and experimental, rather than just being a break from what the band usually produce (yeah, it’s the same album…). I mean, Jesus, they once shamelessly released a song including the lyric “The world is full of refugees/They’re just like you and just like me“. That’s unforgivably bad, isn’t it? They can’t come back from that, artistically.

*“You stand there and you think about what you’ve done”*

(*I may occasionally use cool, groovy, young person lingo like ‘stan’ so you think I’m a hip young gunslinger. Not, y’know, old enough to be a Manics fan)

I’m not able to explain their magic here, but over the next one hundred (!) entries you’ll hopefully all have a better idea. It’s not as dominated by the 90’s as I was worried it might be, and every album is represented (apart from one. Because their tenth album is worse than Hitler). I’ve been wanting to find the time to do this for ages, partially inspired by the great What is Music podcast covering their entire discography and reminding me of how many big veiny stonkers this band had bulging out of their collective musical swimming trunks. They’re talking about Muse on that podcast now, a band for morons, so you only need to listen to the last season. My major blind spot is I don’t think they’ve done a decent b-side since 2001. Now, I’m sure I’m wrong, so please correct my ignorance in the comments. Tell me how wrong I am. Post your top tens. Your top hundreds. The Manic Street Preachers’ fan community is one of the greatest in the world, and no other band are as connected with their fanbase and feed off their adoration as much as The Manics. So let’s celebrate that by calling me a fat slut in the comments because I didn’t choose Little Baby Nothing.

If you don’t have time for such nonsense, here’s the Spotify playlist and here’s all the songs in order on YouTube.

And, er, you might wanna bookmark this page – motherfucker’s gonna be long. Your next 500 trips to the toilet are sorted.

Continue reading →

18 & 17 Big Thief vs Big Thief!

Dec 20, 2019Dec 21, 2019 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

Both ‘U.F.O.F’* and ‘Two Hands’ are fantastic albums. Certainly, nobody has had two albums in the Necessary Evil top 20 before, and it’s certainly to be commended how an artist can release two separate albums of general quality as these two blasts of mana. But let’s temper our explosive ejaculations just a bit, yeah? The two albums last a total of 82 minutes (perhaps. I honestly don’t trust my own maths). Lupe Fiasco’s criminally underappreciated ‘DROGAS WAVE‘ was NINETY EIGHT fucking MINUTES- because Lupe is mildly insane- and was far better than either of these records. There are twenty two tracks spread across these two records. Pffff! ‘DROGAS WAVE‘ has twenty four tracks! And that was 24 tracks narrating the story of the transatlantic slave trade and making it work as an analogy for rebirth and second chances. What’s that, Big Thief? Woozy Impressionism of banal domestic themes? You’re gonna push that for twenty two tracks? Alright. Ha! You thought I wouldn’t have the chance to talk about Lupe Fiasco this year!

Yes! What’s that, Lupe?! *What’s that*?! He’s talking about you again! Who’s a good boy? *Who’s a good boy?!?!*

(*Unidentified Flying Object Fuck. I mean… I assume… It doesn’t say on its Wikipedia page, so I’m out of ideas**)

(**it stands for friend! Unidentified Flying Object Friend!! Dudes, that’s so lame! I’m just saying, if I was 10 years old, I’d call it ‘totally gay’. Luckily, I’m older and wiser and fatter and gayer these days, so I understand the offensive connotations of referring to something as ‘gay’ in the pejorative sense. That’s why I am not saying that calling your album ‘Unidentified Flying Object Friend’ is ‘really gay’. So it’s not. But it totally is, do you understand?)

Continue reading “18 & 17 Big Thief vs Big Thief!” →