Manic Street Preachers are one of my all-time favorite bands. The first time I saw them on television was at the MTV Europe Music Awards 1999. They performed “If You Tolerate This…” a performance I often returned to until I realized there was something special about this band.
The more songs I listened to later on, the more it felt like there is much more where that comes from. I wasn’t wrong. The Manics have had a steady run, head above their contemporaries, for about two decades. And when I say a steady run, I mean from The Holy Bible (1994) until Futurology (2014), a long period during which the band did not release even a single album below above-average. This is almost unprecedented for a rock/alt-rock band, maybe except Radiohead.
I have wholeheartedly listened to them all my adult life. It’s not just the music. It’s the beautiful melancholy infused in their sadness. It’s in the limitless historical and literary references used in the lyrics, first thanks to Richey Edwards and then continued by Nicky Wire. Things also changed as of late. I delved deeper into the band, read two new books, and listened to a podcast dedicated to them. Then, I devoured their Wikipedia page and the page for every album. As if that was not enough, I relistened to the entire discography. The results surprised me: The solid choice of…
