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

Featured ~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

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Manics Discourse that is constantly firing back in forth in my brain*, and the list is already looking dangerously out of date.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 “Stitches and Wounds, Doctored Divinity: Manic Street Preachers’ 100 Greatest Songs (2026 Edition)” →

Legit Bosses – The 160 Best Songs of 2023

~ Lex Leeson ~ 30 Comments

In their 1972 book ‘Psychology of the Arts‘, Hans and Shulamith Kreitler tried to explain the reasoning behind why certain people react in certain ways to certain pieces of art. However, they deemed that to fully explain it, your knowledge of each person would need to “extend over an immeasurably large range of variables, which would include not only perceptive, cognitive, emotional and other personality characteristics, but also biographical data, specific personal experiences, past encounters with art, and individual memories and associations”. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, luckily, I’m here to just tell you what the best music of 2023 was, so all that effort behind your own personal psychosis can be sidestepped altogether. Think of it as my new year’s present.

no spoilers on what number this particular classic finished

And there’s one hundred and sixty this year. Maybe one hundred and sixty one. Because there was a lot of great tunes released in 2023. While limiting the Necessary Evil list to just 40 albums still meant there was space for at least one ‘meh’ album and one absolute stinker, over the past week I’ve actually had to really edit this list down to prevent it being ridiculous. And yet here we are: 160. Maybe 161.

I’m also going to be giving shout outs to particular golden moments in certain songs – similar to what I did in 2018 – and for each of those I’m going to be using a picture of one of the greatest moments in the short history of All Elite Wrestling, because… well… I get the horrible feeling that company is cooked and I hope to look back on this list in five years time and laugh at how pessimistic I was.

Can I finish this before 2024 and maybe have some days off before I go back to work?? Let’s seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

[Edit: No. No I cannot. Not even close.

You’ve got some playlists though, will that make you happy?? Here’s the countdown on Spotify and on YouTube, minus the unavailable songs on whatever platform]

I REMEMBER NOTHING, SO THERE’S NOTHING TO REGRET

28 Lava La Rue: BUTTER-FLY

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

You know that I ain’t blind

I can feel the tension, even when we’re not together

Even when we talk on facetime

Tell me it ain’t wishful thinking

Tell me, girl, I’m not wrong

You know that we more than get along baby

G.O.Y.D

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaw shit. That song… hits… Shit. It’s actually borderline difficult to listen to.

No no no, it’s not difficult because of the phenomenal Lava La Rue, silly! La Rue has absolutely become one of my favourite things in 2021! I love her more than many of my direct family members! I definitely love her more than at least a portion of the people I’ve been married to! In fact, she’s the official winner of the 2021 Necessary Evil One to Watch™ award! Do I have a logo for that? I feel like I should have a logo for that. Hang on a second…

Yes, I know I have beautiful eyes, try saying something original we all don’t already know every now and then, yeah? Lava La Rue now officially has the same accolade awarded to her by Necessary Evil as she did by the Grauniad way back in July 2019. But did that Grauniad award come with such a beautiful logo? No. So sit down, your nonsense didn’t mean shit.

more words to watch (and read)

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

~ Lex Leeson ~ 29 Comments

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

“Repeat after me…”

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

Necessary Evil 2020 pt 3 (80-71)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 13 Comments

#80 High Command: Beyond the Wall of Desolation

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars! Do you sense that? Those faint but ever rising embers of putrid hellfire? Can you feel that, underneath your feet? The unmistakable rumbles of the devil’s chord painfully calling at your wordlessly from the depths? Can you smell that? That unmistakable aroma of a Nailbomb t-shirt once used in desperation as a makeshift toilet tissue but now hurriedly discarded in shame in a Castle Donington Portaloo? You know what that is? That’s metal, son, like they used to make it in the old/Black country!

Seth Manchester joins us once again, he had quite the 2020. Except, this album actually came out in 2019. And, actually, one of his albums from part 1 was even from 2018. Whatever, I’ve had quite a 2020 belatedly realising albums that he’s produced!

Continue reading “Necessary Evil 2020 pt 3 (80-71)” →

Rumble in the Bumble pt.1

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

Have you noticed how things are a bit weird at the moment? Like, there seems to be something in the air, doesn’t there? People seem to be a little less socially active these days; nobody came to your barbecue last Thursday; WWE crowds are drastically down; you’re pretty sure Paul should have been at school these past few weeks not that you’re going to ask the little shit and risk getting pulled into an endless conversational loop about the largest dinosaurs; and Italian mayors seem to be furious these days. Something’s… different…

240g8z
“Aye! Why-a you play-a da pinga-pong?!” #CasualRacism

I don’t watch the news- if I wanted a posh voice feeding me a liberal agenda I’d just ring my parole officer- but it’s clear to me what’s happened. There’s an unmistakable stench of disappointment overlaying an aggressive smog of sadness that’s infected the whole country. They know. You know. Everyone knows.

I am now officially single.

Continue reading “Rumble in the Bumble pt.1” →

8 Sharon van Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow

~ Lex Leeson ~ 8 Comments

Considering neither The Manic Street Preachers or Lupe Fiasco were scheduled to release an album in 2019, I don’t think I was looking forward to any record this year as much as Ms Van Etten’s fifth. Her fourth, ‘Are We There’, was one of the three albums released in 2014 that were legitimate GOAT contenders and all kinda given my joint album of the year. It was such an amazingly accomplished and powerful record, one that moved the more eloquent reviewers to state that it was “an absolutely devastating Sturm und Drag bulldozer of emotion, a sharp piercing blade of hopeless heartache that is as heartbreaking and moving as any movie you’ve seen since ‘Toy Story 3“. I have to assume that Toy Story 3 was still totally a topical reference point when that prodigiously insightful yet dangerously sexually alluring reviewer wrote that. While I spend all of my time excruciatingly droning on about how artists/people should be constantly evolving and pushing their sound/personality forward, I often catch myself just hoping that artists responsible for my favourite things will just do those favourite things again! Hey, Jazz Cartier, why isn’t the new album just Red Alert ten times?? Hey, Tegan and/or Sara, why aren’t you just giving me Walking With A Ghost?? Lil Yachty!! Why are you… why are you… Why are you doing any of this…? I… I’m not sure what exactly I want from you… But do that, please. Do Minnesota again, that’ll cheer me up. Sharon van Etten! I can’t wait to see where you take your sound and evolve your music on this new album! But, having said that, please make it exactly the same record as ‘Are We There’! You can, I dunno, add a few trap beats to a couple of songs and have track eight heavily influenced by Hardware, but make sure that, at the base level, it’s exactly the same as ‘Are We There’!! Give me those exact feels! Reach into my bloodied chest and tear out all of those emotions like you did in 2015!!

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‘Remind Me Tomorrow’… isn’t that record. It’s an incredible reimagining of what weight, muscles and undeniable gall bladders* her songwriting can achieve. Synths blast all over the place like the sounds of invading forces damaging the outer wall of the claustrophobic shelter she’s built herself to evade the apocalyptic terror of her mind outside. The first line of the album is ‘Sitting at the bar I told you everything/You said “Holy shit, you almost died!” and the following songs act as almost a flashback, telling the listener exactly what these near fatal experiences were. It’s an amazing album. Look above, it’s the eighth best album of the year. It was considered for number one, but holy shit, you’re about to see how hotly contested that accolade is this year. Like I said, every top ten album is merely different levels of essential. Buy them all, you cheap fuck.

Continue reading “8 Sharon van Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow” →

19 Equip: CURSEBREAKER X

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

On ‘CURSEBREAKER X’*, Equip step shit up massively. Previously, the less forgiving may have accused them of being more gimmick than legitimate artist. Every album, like 2018’s ‘Synthetic Core 88‘, came with the hook that it was the soundtrack to a video game that existed nowhere but inside Equip’s imagination. This inspired some incredible music, but for many the conceit would be far too ‘cute’ and even ‘eye rollingly hipster’ to bridge that gap between ‘concept you might appreciate’ and ‘music you unreservedly love’. ‘CURSEBREAKER X’ doesn’t just bridge that gap, it clears it in a single bound by casting a +50 COMPOSITIONS spell and fills the cavern beneath it with buffed power ups as it flies over. Equip breaks the game with WWE 2K20 level glitches that make it unplayable, because they’re playing something else entirely with ‘CURSEBREAKER X’.

wwe-2k20.original

(*we’ve seen far too many artists recently, from awakebutstillinbed to Ariana Grande to repeat offender american poetry club, show such a flagrant disregard for proper capitalisation that I’m pleased to see Jamila Woods, Michael Kiwanuka and now Equip have fought against this by, if anything, overcapitalising their records. I’m pleased to officially announce 2019 as The Year We Won Our Capital Back)

Continue reading “19 Equip: CURSEBREAKER X” →

55 Don’t Do It Neil: B/X

~ Lex Leeson ~ 7 Comments

“Descend deep in my body
Ascend me from my body
From my body tonight
Free me from my body tonight”

OK, fair warning- maybe even a trigger warning, but I’ve got to be careful because some people get so fucking angry when you word a content warning that way*- but this post might go to some pretty dark places. I mean, I’m just going to talk about my life a bit, which is always going to be a bit dark, isn’t it? For you, I mean. I’m alright with it, I fucking live with it, but I appreciate how some people might get a bit uncomfortable. These people can just read my Princess Nokia bit again, that was pretty funny. I’m going to use the brilliant ‘B/X’ album as a jumping off point to talk about how I was ‘freed from my body’, then masterfully bring it back at the end to Don’t Do It Neil. It’ll be a fucking amazing post, and I don’t know why more people don’t read this blog, it’s fuckin’ straight fire.

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(*because some people- and I can’t stress this enough- are fucking dumb)

Continue reading “55 Don’t Do It Neil: B/X” →