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

"Everything Must Go" still strikes me as an incredibly ballsy comeback statement both sonically and lyrically, even if "A Design for Life" was the flagship tune.

no more bsides or early singles to come then?

I'd bank on "Stay Beautiful" making it, and that other one.

for a lot of ppl the ballsy statement of EMG was "sorry dudes, we're not gonna be making any music you like anymore"

i tried to talk myself into voting for little baby nothing out of some kind of sentimentality but it hasn't held up at all

16. If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next (from This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours) [7 votes, 150 points, 1998]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX8szNPgrEs

15. Of Walking Abortion (from The Holy Bible) [7 votes, 151 points, 1994]

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

i fell like tolerate and abortion being practically identically regarded maybe indicates we have a healthy balance across the spectrum on manics appreciation. good job team.

I thought I was the only one who liked Further Away!
Lifeblood- not happening :/

14. Stay Beautiful (from Generation Terrorists) [6 votes, 152 points, 1992]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eorwh5MMIao

oh sorry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM_oov3dU6A

stay beautiful is too low

13. Die in the Summertime (from The Holy Bible) [7 votes, 154 points, 1994]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPJtsI74xow

yeah, stay beautiful is too low, and was too low on my ballot too iirc, so i am part of the problem. i know i had a rationale for it at the time but dammit i shoulda had that top 5. all we love is lonely wreckage. lol at swift slip

die in the summertime is good but not a particular highlight for me.

I put Stay Beautiful very high on a whim really, 'cos I barely know it. I've probably only heard it maybe half-a-dozen times somehow, either that or its hook is a lot less hooky than I always think. Anyway I'd thought it might win the whole thing, i associate it with the whole Freaky Trigger/populist aesthetic for some half-understood reason.

IK on vibes

12. Motown Junk (stand-alone single) [7 votes, 156 points, 1991]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axAJ0RtBd7I

last one for tonight

11. You Love Us (from Generation Terrorists) [7 votes, 159 points, 1992]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgKXBJ2LZKo

Surprised those two aren't Top 10. Faster for the win.

never really got the big deal wrt "You Love Us"

Okay, those are two big ones out the way. The top ten's not at all obvious to me.

much prefer the heavenly version of 'you love us.'

'faster' would be a good no. 1.

ok expected them to be top 5. i hope its not just going to be the big hit singles off emg in the top 10

Trying to think what'll definitely place, and there's going to be a good few missing out: at least half of Masses vs Classes, Australia, La Tristesse, Sleepflower, Repeat, Black Dog, Nixon won't make it.

Sleepflower and Repeat better make it

'Faster' must win - it was the first song they ever did that made me actually take them seriously and when 'The Holy Bible' came out I must've listened to it twice a day or more for about three months. It was the oddly comforting soundtrack to the second half of my first acid trip.

'The Holy Bible' sounds pretty middling on relistening now but 'Faster' still sends tingles.

So… Faster, Design, Tristesse, Kevin Carter, Motorcycle, Yes, Masses, This Is Yesterday, Repeat, From Despair to Where? I always forget something when I guess poll top 10s.

If 4st 7lbs also places, that would be every track from The Holy Bible bar Intense Humming of Evil, which even the Manics admit is a bit hard to take. Apparently they played it live just once, and people were running away.

ugh kevin carter. almost as bad as the everlasting

You crazy. One of Richey's best lyrics, punk-funk verses and a Sean trumpet solo. Tense and elegaic at the same time.

I thought 4st 7lbs had placed already, but no. It's a cert.

My guess for the top ten (in order): Faster, Motorcycle, Design, Yes, Despair, Yesterday, Carter, Sleepflower, Masses, Repeat. No Tristesse, no Australia, no Intense Humming.

So much of a cert that I forgot it in the same post! Scratch Masses, it's out - 4st 7 is in at #6.

'kevin carter' is one of the real standouts on EMG (which i used to think was perfect but which now i find a little hard-going in the middle, every single song sounding like it's trying to be a tear-jerking anthem) for me, one of their most compact and perfect songs.

apparently james insisted that richey and nicky rewrite 'intense humming' as the first draft sounded too 'ambiguous' to him. definitely not a subject you want to have ppl debating what you mean by, a la 'pcp' or 'archives of evil.'

i feel pretty silly that i neglected to vote in this poll as relistening to all these albums over the past week reminded me that MSP are still, at least some of the time, my favorite band.

maybe patrick bateman will be a suprise #1 with new art riot at #2

I voted for intense humming, it's an amazing piece of work.

♪♫ Ah-ha'm goin' down / to Suicide Alley ♪♫

i guess my top 10 would've been:

1. yes
2. faster
3. PCP
4. 4st 7lb
5. baby elian
6. sculpture of man
7. this is yesterday
8. no surface all feeling
9. motown junk
10. die in the summertime

'patrick bateman' is so terrible. if i'm bitter at the manics at all it's probably for getting 18-year-old me to read that shitty book.

I felt obliged to spread my top 20 across a few albums to give other songs a chance, otherwise it would have been half Holy Bible.

much prefer the heavenly version of 'you love us.'

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Tuesday, June 28, 2011 2:35 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark

know nothing about this band, hadn't much liked what little i'd heard in the past, but i'm following this thread in an attempt to get an education. turns out they're pretty great! can't really get into the holy bible tracks, but "motown junk" is good and "stay beautiful" is damn near great. love the relative softness of "if you tolerate this..." and "further away" and "little baby nothing" (cultural alienation, boredom and despair).

plus yeah, the heavenly version is way better.

two massive songs to finish on there. fucking mental that you love us isn't top 5. i thought it was an outside contender for #1. what has become of this world? almost enough to make you wanna jump off a bridge. i am assuming that all of the votes were lumped together and that clowns like me who specified the heavenly version didn't kill it with vote splitting? i had it second but i was sad i couldn't have two #1s. GT version sounds a little empty without the background nonsense and obv the iggy pop at the end of the heavenly version is awesome.

motown junk i didn't know about till after GT - maybe after GATS. i was given it on a mixtape and it blew my mind twice over, once because it is so fucking great, and twice because someone had scratched into the shelter at my bus stop "we live in urban hell we destroy rock n roll" and i had read that nearly every week for a year or more and all of a sudden jdb said it out of my sony sports walkman. we are well beyond new art riot territory i guess. bummer.

t looks like the number of #1s isn't being included with each entry - is that right? it would be cool to see that after.

I still grin like a shitty 15-year-old every time I hear "I laughed when Lennon got shot!"

now i'm not a teenager, patrick bateman does indeed sound really terrible

musically its great. You finishing the countdown today?

yep

10. La Tristessa Durera (Scream to a Sigh) (from Gold Against The Soul) [8 votes, 170 points, 1993] tied with 9

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

Their morbid baggy record. Great Chemical Brothers remix of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX1WcbT-2h0

Was the lowest of the GATS tracks on my ballot, it occurs to me now I got things completely backwards.

9. Sleepflower (from Gold Against The Soul) [7 votes, 170 points, 1993] tied with 10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGYnEtqU8u8

yes!

^!

Oh good. GATS always feels like the forgotten Manics album, but it has by far the catchiest riffs.