Manic Street Preachers Destructive Alienating Cultural and Despair Filled Tracks POLL RESULTS

sadly, "SWSS" has one of their better videos.

I like both of those a lot.

im getting excited for the top 20 already. Are there any non-album tracks to come?

i've always been intrigued by archives of pain. it reads very well as a parody of the opinions it supposedly espouses. i kind of wonder if he did that on purpose, showing the conflict between the impulsive reaction to something and his ethical/rational take. and i guess as a criticism of the fetishization(?) of murder and murderers the bent of the lyrics makes sense as rhetorical exaggeration. there's clearly a lot more to it than just advocating capital punishment etc but it sounds from comments the others have made that that was a genuine part of it too, assuming they had a convo about it at the time, "so rich, what's the deal with the, eh, tearing torsos and such?"

So much contrarianism on THB it's hard to tell what to take seriously, although iirc the biog I read suggested they were sincere if misguided about a lot of it, "fuck the brady bill" in particular. Certainly I always found it easier to lol at "scratch my leg with a rusty nail, sadly it heals" than anything in archives of pain.

yes some bsides to come

in fact...

40. Sepia (b-side to Kevin Carter) [3 votes, 68 points, 1996]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkjx-znIO48

xposts true about Archives of Pain - it could well be a critique of smoke'em'out hysteria rather than a claim for capital punishment.

"Sepia" is OK but they have many better b-sides.

Never worked out why 'So Why So Sad' is hated so much.

39. ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart (from The Holy Bible) [4 votes, 70 points, 1994] (tied with 37 & 38)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNtD6mrkSZ0

where's the bad apostrophe?? revisionism!

ha. so anyway apparently "fuck the brady bill" (requiring background checks on firearms purchasers) because it was an attempt to prevent the poor and black from tooling up, to keep power in the hands of the white and privileged. I dunno if they got that straight from the NRA...

decent song though, nice singalong bridge. but what the hell is that zapruder masturbation line about.

i mean i can guess what it's about but y'know... o_O

probably my least fave on THB. still pretty great though.

38. Revol (from The Holy Bible) [3 votes, 70 points, 1994] (tied with 37 & 39)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf91dTrLkgA

sha na na

i like that zapruder line! it really stood out to me at the time. i remember telling friends about it and expecting some kind of amazing response. i guess i had and still have a thing about the many different varieties and levels of rubber-necking that ppl get swept up in.

revol was the single i liked least off THB. i still had it around #25 iirc.

this song weirded me out a bit when I initially heard it (at 14 or so), now I just think it's catchy and kickass.

it would be my first choice for holy bible karaoke i reckon.

the undeniable thrill of shouting nazi buzzwords

private room karaoke of course.

lucky voice, with all the accoutrements - afro wig, blow up guitar, nazi armbands.

lolll

just looking at the singles discog and that run of UK chart placements from 96 to 07 is insaaaane: 2 5 9 7 1 9 8 15 19 6 2 2 2 10

"Masses Against the Classes" was the first UK #1 of 2000, wasn't it? (also, LOL)

yeah i fucked that up:

2 5 9 7 1 2 11 5 11 1 9 8 15 19 6 2 2 2 10

Yep - only happened because that week after Xmas is always the slowest singles week of the year (also the reason Iron Maiden got a number one with Bring Your Daughter i seem to recall) and they were headlining the huge new arena in Cardiff on NYE

i remember playing their cover of Rock'n'Roll Music b/w the Beach Boys' versio on student radio at the time. Fuck knows what led me to do that - both were drivel.

as long as we're talking trivia - are they the only rock band to have worked with the Bomb Squad? Wikipedia seems to think so.

sorry, let me rephrase that: are they the only group of white dudes with guitars to have worked with the Bomb Squad?

Last two for today...

37. Your Love Alone Is Not Enough (from Send Away The Tigers) [3 votes, 1 first place, 70 points, 2007] (tied with 38 & 39)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_OnFHJou4o

36. Too Cold Here (b-side to Revol) [3 votes, 71 points, 1994]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoW8IyJEMfQ

that's the only one on the list that I'm sure I voted for. Great song.

vocal rhythms of ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit'sworldwouldfallapart really get stuck in my head. "unimportant just another inner city drive by thing", who'd have thought such a line would be so catchy?

otm - really top craft from jdb there

Also hurrah for 'Too Cold Here' - I missed it off at the last moment for its bleakness, which was stupid.

yeah, top respect to bradfield for corralling all of that lyrical lunacy. i love it when you can tell he has changed something to crowbar a lyric in and it only just makes sense still. am i right in remembering that the GT lyrics book has "throw some acid into the mona lisa's face" in defiance of the fact that that would be impossible to sing and he doesn't even try? also like to imagine the conversation when richey+nicky heard how he brutalizes the pronunciation of la tristesse durera. "fuck it you pricks, it goes with the fuckin tune, that's how it's fuckin staying"

I want 'Life Becoming A Landslide' to win this now - just (belatedly) realised it's the best thing they did.

I like that one but the chunk production of that whole record is a huge distraction.

*chunky

love that album now.

landslide is an extreme example of the manics combining corny and profound. i loved it so much but as i have gotten older and crabbier some of the triter lyrics and elements like the fucking horrible strings constantly seem to get in my way of enjoying the song. over the few revisions i did it slipped from my top ten to off the list. it seemed to get worse with every listen.

overthinking! my "revisions" consisted of reading lyrics pages and replaying some songs i last listened to ten years ago, maybe all the way through if they got lucky. this was an adolescent poll for me (adolesence reaching into my mid 20s to be fair).

btw is the countdown continuing over the weekend? if so i will be absent for most of it ;_;

nah i'm gonna be busy so will do another 15 on monday

http://martyvanags.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/BurnsExcellentSticker.jpg

http://img.buzznet.com/assets/imgx/3/7/6/1/2/5/1/orig-3761251.jpg

Pauvre petit Sean can't catch a break in that photo.

here we go then

35. Enola/Alone (from Everything Must Go) [3 votes, 81 points, 1996] tied with 34 & 33

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgVyQRqTZu4

34. Mausoleum (from The Holy Bible) [3 votes, 81 points, 1994] tied with 35 & 33

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf4zsRbiHY4

Sorry I didn't have time to vote in this. Enjoying reading the results nonetheless. My number one would have been Faster, without a shadow of a doubt. Probably the best rock song of the 1990s.

Had to remind myself which one Mausoleum is. It's one of the ones on The Holy Bible which works least well I think (only faint criticism!). The gear change into the 'chorus' is either too prominent or not prominent enough, I can't decide - the former because the two parts don't mesh all that well, the latter because there's no *huge* dynamic shift, so it makes the song more of a kind of featureless hum. Maybe one time where the Spartan arrangement let's them down a little?

Thinking about the poll over the weekend, Ifwhiteamerica... is really scandalously low, what a terrific track. I can hardly talk though, I didn't note for it myself.