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

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.

very underrated album.

EMG was the first Manics album not to have a naked torso on the cover. Was this a thing?

Repeat over Tristessa was a bad call, but I'd like to point out that other than that my top ten has been 100% accurate so far.

Sleepflower's brilliant, obviously. The best riff!

8. From Despair to Where (from Gold Against The Soul) [9 votes, 189 points, 1993]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7JTXZMfDq0

Had I voted, "Tristesse" would've been my #1.

Listening now, I've just realised I don't like the strings on Despair. They should've had a big, overloaded guitar solo instead. It seems the kind of obvious move, actually, I wonder why they didn't?

7. This Is Yesterday (from The Holy Bible) [7 votes, 1 first place, 202 points, 1994]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEsL-vs1w

love This Is Yesterday...

That's my first-place. It's not the first top pick to show, is it?!

three other tracks have had them so far

So they have. Three Two (relative) obscurities, too.

This Is Yesterday is grand, except for the rather pedestrian drumming.

6. 4st 7lb (from The Holy Bible) [9 votes, 1 first place, 244 points, 1994]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy2ebaAGMU0

Best song that begins "Days since I last pissed"...

nah it's fantastic tho, my #3. I definitely prefer Richie when he's empathising with the lost and damned, than when he's in pure polemical mdoe.

Richey, wth

Great to see Sleepflower get so high! I'm a little surprised to see This is Yesterday in the top 10 too, great track as it is.

Since the Manics, how many other British bands can we name whose lyrics were actually about concrete reified concepts, if you see what I mean? Something I think I took for granted about the band at the time are the issues being addressed here - some of the ideas here are misguided, but well intentioned and intelligent. I can't think of many more recent commercially viable acts who've achieved anything similar.

Not sure there's been anyone like them before or since, in terms of how deeply they burrow into such matters. I was going to say 'politics', but that feels like a very inadequate description of what they were doing.

I was thinking about the sheer hostility they provoked when they arrived, and how contempt for going in for 'concepts' was so much part of that. I hope the h8ers enjoyed the years of Noelisms that followed.

5. Kevin Carter (from Everything Must Go) [9 votes, 1 first place, 252 points, 1996]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLDr0QNCUd4

RIPeat (and Masses Against The Classes)

Again, I can't bring myself to like Kevin Carter because it's nearly the same as The Trickster by Radiohead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBHRiKZY2fk

have loved both songs for years and never made the connection. can't say it bothers me much now the connection has been made...

cool to see sleepflower break the top ten. that and from despair definitely rise above the flaws that keep the rest of the album down. this is yesterday is a good but unspectacular track, surprised to find it so high. 4st 7 i just couldn't vote for, not for any lack of appreciation, but taken out of the context of the album and looking thru a 'top trax' lens, it's too much. kevin carter is good, the EMG track that nearly made it on for me, but 5 is kinda lol. does that mean australia is still to come? oh dear.

Trickster / KC don't sound that similar now I listen to them side by side, but still, very similar tempo/chord progression.

KC wins in the trumpet solo stakes. Lyrically too.

This Is Yesterday is grand, except for the rather pedestrian drumming.

I actually quite like the drumming - when the guitar solo starts and that simple but emphatic drum line comes in, it's maybe the only sunny/optimistic moment on the entire album.

don't really "get" Sleepflower, kinda just sounds like generic arena rock to me.

4. A Design For Life (from Everything Must Go) [11 votes, 2 first place, 275 points, 1996]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfEoVxy7VDQ

oh hello. shit juss got real.

Ha! I didn't think that would win.

allsimgonnasayandimgonnaberealbriefhereisthatireallyfuckinhatethatterriblegoddamnsongthereisaidit

Heard it a few too many times to vote for it, but I figured it'd place about there.

TOO LOW

It's not really a terrible song though, is it? It's not like we've just put symm in the top five.

"ADFL" isn't the best example, but I've always loved the sound of EMG, production-wise - somehow both shiny/colorful and ever-so-slightly raw.

no, we've put one of the best pop songs of all time in instead.

3. Yes (from The Holy Bible) [11 votes, 2 first place, 344 points, 1994]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mtwZaRObP8

Gah, I was hoping it'd win. What a track.