A 1980 film Times Square was a story about two young girls with different backgrounds, running away from their parents in New York, forming a punk band called Sleez Sisters and suddenloy becoming popular. The whole “from underdogs to gigantic success while defying every rule in the book” aesthetic of the film resonated quite a bit in the young Manics and Wire in particular was obsessed with the film, and thus the band covered the Sleez Sisters song “Damn Dog” for Generation Terrorists.
The original version is a bit twee, as funny as it is to say that from a punk rock song, and it goes without saying that the Manics version is – like the rest of Generation Terrorists – a beefed up, big rock song. More guitar revving, more general in-your-face attitude. It is catchy as anything and it has a tongue-in-cheek ridiculousness to it that works like a charm, but to call it anything but filler would really be stretching things. The band often played the song live at the time of the debut album (and one such version is on the Generation Terrorists 20th box set in lieu of a demo version) so it has a minor place in the canon and wasn’t just a random thing to throw on the wall in the studio, but it’s hard to escape the fact that it’s a novelty cover of a song that honestly never had much chops to begin with. It’s only two minutes long but it feels like the culmination of the band’s desire to stuff the album to its fullest simply for the sake of it.
The most notable thing about “Damn Dog” is that it’s the only song on the debut album where Sean actually plays live drums.
The band’s original signature song and long-time set closer, a bitter ‘anti-Valentine’ song that’s somewhere between egomaniac and self-loathing. “You Love Us” was conceived as a pre-emptive statement from the band to their vocal critics when they first started, shutting them up before they can say a word to outright declare that they will love the band – and it would be completely irrelevant whether it’s because they like the music or because they can simply generate headlines they can sell through the band’s antics. It’s a hell of a statement for a young band to come out with, but that’s what makes it so good. It’s positively sneering and full of bullshit bravado, but it pushes through with such raw power that it makes for an easy converter to the band’s charms. It’s a song constantly on a mission to one-up itself and go even more over the top, and it’s crazy enough to succeed. What a wonderful, exhilirating wild ride of a track.
Or at least, that’s the Sony version. “You Love Us” was originally released as a one-off single during the band’s brief stint at Heavenly Recordings, and then completely reworked for the album release when they signed up with Sony and started recording the debut album. The original version is more twee than muscular: the production doesn’t quite live up to the intended power of the message and James sounds too squeaky-voiced to come across with any authority, and the erratic backing vocal yelps (culminating in Nicky’s brilliant “control!”) are genuinely ridiculous. The Sony version on the other hand has all the Generation Terrorists hallmarks, from chunky riffs to pounding artificial drums, and within a year James has become a frontman who can truly command the audience. It’s the Sony version that’s the definitive version of the song and the one that the band keep playing, and it’s easy to see why: it just makes more sense musically given the message.
That said, over the years I’ve started the favour the original version in other ways and while it’s never going to be as powerful as the Sony version, the eccentric whimsy of the Heavenly version is charming in completely different ways. It’s ramshackle and ragtag, but it’s a ton of fun. I also prefer the outro of the original version, where the band rips off Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” and adds an apocalyptic sing-along outro to the song (which sometimes makes a live cameo as the song’s intro nowadays). Once again, it’s a ton of fun – and has more personality than the guitar solo shredfest that the Sony version concludes with. The Heavenly version also starts with a sample of Krzysztof Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima”, which works but it’s a little superfluous and isn’t missed on the album version.
I really wish there was some sort of a mixture between the Sony and Heavenly versions of “You Love Us”, even when performed live. The Sony version has got a proper kick to it and the sort of attitude a song like this should have, but the liveliness and charm of the Heavenly version feel just as essential to the song.
Both singles also got videos. The Heavenly version video is a bit more DIY, composed of live and studio clips (featuring an adorably young band) with little concept. The Sony version is the more iconic one, presenting the band as something more glamorously dangerous, full of baiting beauty shots and taunting macho bravado. Both are good, though I prefer the Sony version as it matches the tone of the song better. Both singles also had different sleeve quotes: Heavenly was graced with a Marilyn Monroe quote “I knew I belonged to the public and to the world not because I was talented or even beautiful but because I had never belonged to anyone or anything else”, while the Sony version got a bit more to-the-point quote of “False media – we don’t need it do we” from Chuck D.
The quintessential Generation Terrorists song in some respects. “You Love Us” and “Motorcycle Emptiness” are more iconic in the wider picture, but “Stay Beautiful” places the early incarnation of the band’s ethos into song and through that, has become legendary both among the band and the fanbase; it was even originally called “Generation Terrorists” in its demo days. It was also the first official single released from the debut album, and therefore for a particular set of people was the first taste of the band’s official rise. And what better way to do it than by declaring out loud “we’re a mess of eyeliner and spraypaint”.
Unlike the snarky and muscular “You Love Us” and the seriously anthemic “Motorcycle Emptiness”, “Stay Beautiful” is simply really fun, exhuberant song: an us-against-the-world party anthem both hopelessly glamorous and glamorously hopeless. It’s a song that lives by its undeniable attitude and rebellious vigour, and its glam punk drive is undeniable. It’s primarily about its simple and snappy hooks, but underneath it features some of James’ most memorable guitarwork on the record and that subtle piano that keeps appearing throughout Generation Terrorists is once again responsible for some wonderful additional flourish. While the album’s awkward production stifles some of its energy, the song does manage to punch through it. Unassuming at first, “Stay Beautiful” has a potent way of charming the listener – and so no wonder it’s gained the reputation it has. Like all of the album it’s seriously full of itself, but nowhere else on the record does that come across so incredibly jubilant.
It is, however, a song that arguably makes most sense in a live setting. The airplay-friendly self-censorship by way of a strategically placed guitar lick in the “why don’t you just -” chorus is gone when played live, with the audience filling in the “fuck off” we all know should go there, and James often joins on the repeat of the line (in many of Generation Terrorists nods to Guns ‘n’ Roses, the chorus in general is a homage to the similar moment in the US hard rock act’s “It’s So Easy). On stage, be it a small venue or a grand stadium, “Stay Beautiful” becomes the anthem it always dreamed to be: a three-minute rush where the band is reinvigorated, the audience is fully connected and the self-congratulatory triumph of the song gets to really set the fireworks off.
The video is a dictionary definition of an early 1990s rock video that tries way too hard to be something weird and quirky. I can just about understand the band getting paint thrown all over themselves as just a neat budget-friendly visual quirk, but by the time the giant spider comes in to walk by the crumbled house the band played in, we’ve gone deep into music video silliness. It’s charming in its goofiness, though.
I normally try to include the sleeve quotes for the singles in these little writings because I’m a huge fan of the Manics making this their thing, but “Stay Beautiful” not only has a grand total of five different quotes across all formats, but most of them are also really, really long. Thus, rather than artificially inflate the article length I’ve omitted them this time.
Finally, I once read someone having heard the closing “destroyed by madness” as “destroyed by Manics”, and to this day I think that in a particularly cheeky way it would work so well as a hidden treat, much like the band listing themselves in “Archives of Pain”.
“Slash ‘n’ Burn” is, by all milestones, a great opening track. It’s got a direct reach that immediately grabs the listener, it sets the scene tonally for the album and it boasts a hell of a shout-along chorus that acts as the call-to-arms to convince the listener they’ve started something great. Some people would debate if Generation Terrorists counts as ‘something great’, but even they would have been charmed by “Slash ‘n’ Burn”.
That is to say, it kicks off its album with a bang. Every single trait of Generation Terrorists is made clear from the very first minute: the shouting guitars, the bombastic rock and roll drama where 80s hair metal anthems meet glammed-up punk, the ridiculously over the top lyrics where each line is a manifesto begged to be scrawled in some teenager’s personal notebook, the unashamedly poppy hooks that contrast with all the aforementioned, and that twink of tongue in cheek smirk underneath the supposed po-facedness. From the guitar intro to the soaring chorus and the brilliant build-up break, “Slash ‘n’ Burn” is a jubilantly great crowd pleaser that was made to fly free in giant stadiums long before the band could even think of reaching them. But they had the ambition – goals of 12 million album sales and all – and they made their opening song match that ambition.
Of all the Generation Terrorists singles “Slash ‘n’ Burn” is the least remembered – perhaps thanks to its lackluster live footage video though James looks incredibly cool playing this song shirtless – but among that line-up of classic chart hit wannabes it’s one of the best. It’s an absolute anthem from the riffs to the vocals, has one of the best choruses of the entire record and it’s full of little moments of joy: the riff-only breakdown, James’ falsetto “that’s all you nee-ee-eeeed”, and that Guns ‘n’ Roses -esque fake orgasm launching right back into the final sets of choruses. In fact, the whole thing is all very Guns ‘n’ Roses and is one of the clearest love letters from James to one of his biggest inspirations on the entire record, to the point that title has to be an intentional nod (or given how the Manics write these songs, James took it as a guideline to write the song with). The lyrics are also one of the best on Generation Terrorists: I’m never going to be completely sold on the style the band exhibited very early on, but “Slash ‘n’ Burn” pulls it off excellently.
“Slash ‘n’ Burn” is one of the handful of songs that got a remix treatment for the US version of Generation Terrorists, adding in live drums instead of the rigid drum machine of the original. It’s otherwise kept faithful to the original and it’s objectively the better version (take a listen to the tom-beat under the solo to compare), but I’m just too used to that clinical MIDI drumkit to truly prefer it.
The sleeve quote for the single was Herman Melville’s “Only the man who says no is free”, echoing the song’s anti-consumerist attitude.
In my eyes and ears this extreme deep cut, hidden away as the penultimate song on an 18-track album way beyond the point where most people’s attention span has well and truly drifted away, is as essential as “Stay Beautiful” and “You Love Us”. “Methadone Pretty” falls in the same camp of glamourised self-destruction as those two songs, but in place of the jubilance of “Stay Beautiful” and the defiance of “You Love Us”, “Methadone Pretty” is bold and confident. It’s a firm-footed anthem, commanding of attention. You can’t help but fall for it.
The big thing is that it’s got some of the absolute best writing and arrangement on Generation Terrorists. Each line James sings is a memorable hook onto its own, the frequent musical emphases on certain lyrics (the instrument drop on the title part, the riff lead-outs after lines) effectively serve as double hooks and the final solo is a thing of tactful guitar hero heaven. There’s a constant sense of liberation radiating from the song – freedom in acknowledging one’s own doomed state and shouting ‘fuck you’ at the world – that comes through in that rising post-chorus title drop instrumental break and culminates in the fantastic “I accuse history” breakdown, which is one of the entire album’s greatest highlights. It’s that sense of resolution, that inspiring yearning which defines my love for this song: it’s exactly the kind of song where you understand why some people find strength and salvation in rock music in particular.
Everything the Manics aimed for during this glam generation terrorist phase of theirs is right here, in this song. On the album it serves as the leap back to form after a series of random side tracts, refocusing the record for its final stretch and that’s no big task given what Generation Terrorists is like.
Somehow both bad-ass and unintentionally comedic. Sloganeer lyrics fired rapidly one after another, James’ electric guitar churns and chugs over a beat that barely tries to disguise it’s a drum machine, crowned by a truly batshit insane guitar solo that’s among one of James’ most self-gratuitous moments. The gentle acoustic intro with Patrick Jones reciting his poetry lulls you into into a false sense of security what’s to come, before the whole thing explodes into the 3-minute hyperactive glorious mess that it is.
It’s a ridiculous song that goes more and more into overdrive the further it proceeds, endlessly twisting into this mess of bravado and relentlessness that you can’t help but be in awe of. The band have had less than kind words to say about the song over the years and it’s understandable to some degree, because it’s such a mad blast of a song that you can’t take seriously and likely doubly so if you’re the person who came up with it, but it’s that same crazy energy that makes it such a stand-out. Little wonder it became a single, bound with “Repeat” as a double A-side but serving as the de facto lead track of the bundle – it commands attention, good or bad.
“Love’s Sweet Exile” is among the band’s earliest songs and was originally called “Faceless Sense of Void”, and the ancient demo is doing rounds in the internet for those who search. The style is closer to New Art Riot EP and the lyrics and structure differ slightly, but it’s not massively different from the album version, certainly far closer to the final version than some of the other early Manics demo cuts. The demo on the Generation Terrorists 20th anniversary re-issue isn’t the same demo, and rather shows an already largely finalised song (bar a few lyric tweaks) that’s now gained its signature chugga-chugga riff.
In 2010 the band released a brand new re-recording (not a remix) of the song as a free download with no warning, explanation or apparent reason to do so; by this point the band were knee-deep in Postcards from a Young Man and given “Love’s Sweet Exile” hasn’t exactly been a favourite among the band’s ranks, the whole affair is really bizarre. The “Acoustic Blue” version turns the song into a dreamy, alt-country tinged mood piece, removing the rock ‘n’ roll energy (and the guitar solo) and replacing it with a soft, hazy and half-awake atmosphere. To everyone’s surprise it’s also shockingly good: it’s so different you can’t really even compare it to the original, but the brand new goals it sets out for the song are not only interesting but the band succeed in meeting them. It’s a lovely soundscape piece, and it still baffles me.
The music video for the song is a simple black and white performance video, but it’s by and far the most homoerotic piece of media the band have ever done as they writhe around toplessly for three minutes (except Sean, who’s just there drumming away with the enthusiasm of a man who can’t wait to get home) and so it’s become a cheeky fan favourite. The token single sleeve quote came from Albert Camus and also appears in the video: “Then came human beings, they wanted to cling but there was nothing to cling to”
One of Generation Terrorists‘ underdogs, a song that for many seems to vanish into the album’s messy middle section but which stands out for me above many of the other cuts. In all honesty, it also confuses me how someone could not pay attention to this given how loaded with gimmicks it is. The song has some serious groove to it that’s otherwise absent from the record, the sudden punk rock bridge serves as a wake-up call, the sing-along chorus with the ragtag choir of friends and studio staff begging to be sung along… and James’ bizarre “DIE-sease” pronunciation. The latter is likely a way to highlight the AIDS pun of the title, though mercifully the song isn’t an AIDS-conspiracy anthem but rather an attack against the American entertainment industry. The drum production as well stands out, though unintentionally, as this is where the decision to use a drum machine throughout the record is most obvious. Even the blissfully ignorant young me, unaware of the actual drum production of the record, thought something was off.
But, with that amount of things that instantly jump out of the song, it’s hard to believe it wouldn’t register. It is a really ridiculous song – even compared to the overall silliness of its parent album – but that’s why it’s so much fun. It’s a crazy blend of 80s hard rock theatrics with a punk attitude, collapsing into an actual anthem that’s defiant against society and having a great time while doing so. After the remix of “Repeat” and the muddy “Tennessee”, “Another Invented Disease dives in to inject some life into the album once again to keep the listener going through the marathon length.
All we want from you are the kicks you’ve given us
If you were to anoint one song as the definitive Manic Street Preachers song, “Motorcycle Emptiness” would be the most likely contender to hold that title. “A Design for Life” is their unquestionable signature song and “If You Tolerate This” is the grand international hit that brought them wider success, but “Motorcyle Emptiness” is truly timeless. It distills so much of the band’s DNA within its six minutes, highlights their ethos and ideals both lyrically and musically, and it’s the one song that you could pluck out of its parent album and place in any other Manics album, and in the vast majority of cases it would fit in perfectly. Manic Street Preachers as a concept is distilled into this song, and I can’t think of a song that would define them as a musical group better.
It’s fascinating – mindblowing, actually, – how you can find this anthem of such grace and finesse in the middle of a bunch of heywire glam rock riff salads. It’s completely out of the place and completely out of style for the Manics in 1992 and akin to a time traveler, coming to visit from the band’s future in their very first album. I can’t even start to imagine how wild it was for anyone to hear this back in 1992, given the image the Manics had given of themselves up to this point – this literally would have come out of nowhere, and having read a lot of interviews and anecdotes from people who did experience it in real time, it was a real rug-pull moment that suddenly gave the band more credibility than anything they had ever done before. It is absolutely a harbinger of the future, the first clear sign that everything the band would go on to do from Everything Must Go onward was always lurking underneath.
It is, of course, a real classic song. James’ riff (inspired by ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”) is arguably his most iconic riff and it is a thing of beauty, but so is damn near everything else on the song. James’ voice is full of gravitas and depth that otherwise doesn’t get much chance to shine on Generation Terrorists, the lyrics are an incredible wild jungle of cryptic one-liners but each one sounds absolutely vital and poignant, and the middle-eight is forever going to be one of the band’s very finest individual moments: how the strings swoop down, the gentle piano comes to lift James (that twinkling ‘riff’ deserves a place among Manics’ top melodies in its own right) and how it slowly starts building the pace back together. It’s altogether hair-raising, and as a song it sits firmly among the band’s very finest – the one song to unite every faction of the band’s fanbase in admiration of how stunning this piece of music is.
The 20th anniversary release of Generation Terrorists includes a demo that’s effectively a fully-realised version of the song that James sketches out over a drum machine, but the actual traces of “Motorcycle Emptiness” go way further than that. An early demo called “Go Buzz Baby Go” is effectively an embryonic version of “Motorcycle Emptiness”, and while the lyrics and chorus are different and the iconic riff is missing, the melodies and the general structure are clearly there and recognisable as the song we know and love today – and when James starts repeating “motorcycle emptiness…” the connection becomes obvious.
The band also remixed the song in 2002 around the Forever Delayed sessions, intended as a promotional single either for the compilation or to celebrate the song’s tenth anniversary, but due to still-unknown issues in the background the remix effectively got stuck in limbo. The tenth anniversary re-issue of the single contained the original 1992 version of the song instead, and if it wasn’t for some obscure promos leaking the 2002 remix (also known as the Forever Delayed Remix) would likely never have found the light of the day. It’d be a shame: the music has been entirely re-recorded to reflect the song’s more contemporary live rendition, with Sean’s actual drums instead of the Generation Terrorists drum machine, there’s the riff-only intro that the band introduced to the song, and the middle-eight now has some atmospheric keyboard work in addition to the already existing elements . It sounds really, really incredible and dare I say actually superior to the original – it’s faithful but uplifted, in the way that a band who’s been playing the song for ten years can pull off with experience. It comes this close to steal the original’s throne but a few key details get in the way: the remix is based on the song’s radio edit so two minutes of the track are missing (crucially from that ever-important middle-eight), and they’ve kept James’ original vocals which clash a little bit with the more refined studio production. It’s my hopes that one day they’ll officially release this version but until then, keep sharing the files and check Youtube.
The only official remix of the song was released as a b-side to the “Australia” single, by Stealth Sonic Orchestra who regularly remixed the band’s works around the mid-late 1990s. It’s a typical SSO remix in that much of the rock backing has been stripped out in favour of a MIDI-orchestral symphony, and much like all the other SSO remixes it’s legitimately delightful. The “Motorcycle Emptiness” one even gets a little bombastic and grandiose towards its end, which suits the song.
The song was released as one of the many singles from Generation Terrorists, and the video sees the band solemnly walk around Japan, taking in the sights. It’s a really boring idea when you describe it, but it’s a surprisingly effective video – there’s some great visuals both from Japan and from the band, and given how massively important those early Japan trips were for the band and how much of an impact they had for years to come, it’s now a nice snapshot of that moment in time. The singles came with two sleeve quotes: “I talk to the God but the sky is empty” from Sylvia Plath is the more associated quote with the song (also appearing in the album liner notes), but there’s also the Marlon Brando quotation “The more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalized, develop scabs, never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything because you always feel too much.”
While nestled deep into Generation Terrorists middle third, “Tennessee” is in fact one of the earliest officially released Manics songs as it originally appeared as the b-side to the “Suicide Alley” single, under the title “Tennessee (I Get Low)”. Which goes some way to explain why it’s a little out of fashion compared to the rest of the album. Manics had by this point started to become more ambitious with their songs, but “Tennessee” is very straightforward and its arrangement and writing far closer to the band’s pre-Heavenly days than anything around it on the album. There isn’t also too much of a difference between the original version and the re-recording, the general production difference and the band’s grown experience aside: the tempo’s a little slower on the album version and the raggedy backing vocals on the “I Get Low” version are gone and instead James now lays some additional harmonies in the chorus (which are the highlight of the song), but a good 85% of the song is the same.
Why the band chose to bring it back is likely more to due with the desire to fill Generation Terrorists to the brim with anything they could rather than any real passion for the song, and while it’s won me over a little over the years it’s still clearly among the most disposable cuts on the album, certainly out of the original songs. I’m going to put some of the blame on the production though. Even though Generation Terrorists generally sounds terrible (although if you’re a long time fan you’ve likely grown an affinity to it in a so-bad-it’s-good way), “Tennessee” is especially so. The mix is awfully muddy and devoid of any detail, all instruments merging into a uniform mush behind James. The “I Get Low” version is actually better in this regard because while it sounds bad in a wholly different way, the punk energy comes across much clearer and helps sell the song.
The lyrics are inspired by the American playwright Tennessee Williams, whose tragic lifestory is absolutely something that Nicky and Richey would have fawned over in their book circle. While the lyrics are rather disjointed and vague, I would still claim that this is arguably the start of the band’s biography pieces.
The Manics tried so hard to make “Repeat” into a signature song. There’s more different demos of it out there – officially and unofficially released – than of any other Manics song which attests to how keen the band was to have it around throughout their early development, there’s two different versions of it on the album itself and it even got released as a double A-side single with “Love’s Sweet Exile” even though they must have known that it would never be played anywhere in public (no video was made, either). But of course, that was in some ways the point. On an album that otherwise flexes its literary muscles it’s the simplest and most to-the-point song lyrically: “fuck queen and country”, with no flourishes around it. It was absolutely intended to be a controversial firestarter and that’s why it was likely kept around, to add fuel to the fire the band’s hype machine was keeping alight. It was made to stir the pot.
And yet, the biggest controversy it ended up creating was the “Stars and Stripes” remix that was included on Generation Terrorists, not even as a bonus track but as part of the first half of the record before the actual “Repeat” is even introduced. The remix was done by The Bomb Squad, most famous as the production team for Public Enemy whom the Manics admired and who are sampled as the intro for the actual “Repeat”: the collaboration itself was rather hands-off between the two parties, a simple commission job that took little communication. On an album often criticised of being overstuffed with filler, the Stars and Stripes remix is generally considered to be the most pointless inclusion of them all and the first in line when people start editing down songs off the album for their shortened tracklists. And, well, who could blame anyone for doing so? The Stars and Stripes remix isn’t actually that terrible per se – it’s chaotic and incredibly dated, but it sounds like the riot that took place after the call-to-arms of “Repeat” and there’s a weird charm to its manic energy (my favourite part: the sampled up guitar solo segments that appear out of nowhere a few times). That absolutely doesn’t make it a good song though, and certainly doesn’t justify its inclusion in the main tracklist.
The actual “Repeat”, subtitled the UK version on the record, is the closest thing the Manics ever got to raw primal punk over the artsier Clash-esque side they otherwise leaned to. It’s a straightforward three-minute shout-along that leaves grace behind and focuses on aggressive intent, shouting its central message in a way that you can’t ignore it. It’s fine. It lives by its intent and energy rather than any real songwriting, as is the case with most punk of its ilk, and it’s another song where some of that energy gets sucked out by the production choices made on the album; three minutes also feels like it’s too long for a song so simple and repetitive. It’s nowhere near the top tiers of Generation Terrorists songs but you could argue it has a place in the song selection because of its more explicit message and how it’s closest to the band’s punk roots than anything else on the album. Or just relegate it as a b-side where it probably would have made more sense, because by the time the band finally got the chance to record it in a studio the song was already starting to feel like a relic of the past.
“Repeat” does however have a place in the Manics history book by being the song they were explicitly told not to play during one of their early 1990s gigs in Thailand by the actual Thai government, under threat of arrest. They played it anyway. Mad lads.
Manic Street Preachers song-by-song 