Twenty foot high on Blackpool promenade

I recently put together a two hour runner's playlist for a friend who is going for a half-marathon.

Then this week I decided I needed to put together a mood-shifter to reverse my negative mood of late. My go to for emotional connection with music is Manic Street Preachers, so here's an energy boosting mix of Manicness (I like the chronological order, so sue me). While these are all songs I love Faster is probably my favorite song of all time, though Condemned to Rock and Roll has a lyric that's almost as good and the riffs are stunning. I've been playing most of these on the acoustic off and on for a few years. I may even end up recording my own version if I get motivated. Lyrical excerpts ahead.

Motown Junk (single, 1991)

Motown junk a lifetime of slavery
Songs of love echo underclass betrayal
We live in urban hell, we destroy rock and roll

You Love Us (original Heavenly version) (single, 1991)

We are not your sinners
Our voices are for real
We realise we won't be mourned
We're gonna burn your deathmask uniforms
We won't die of devotion
Honestly we could never belong
Throw some acid in the Mona Lisa's face
Pollute your mineral water with a strychnine taste

Crucifix Kiss (from Generation Terrorists, 1992)

Make poverty your perfect home
Allow your leaders to control you
Questions are now blasphemy
Why walk when you can crawl
Stay on your knees and kiss my feet
Censorship'll stop your excess thought
Check your billboard for my tour

Sleepflower (from Gold Against the Soul, 1993)

Morning always seems too stale to justify
Lament blossoms, hours minutes of our lives
Broken thoughts run through your empty mind
At least a beaten dog knows how to lie

I feel like I'm missing pieces of sleep
A memory fades to a, a pale landscape
You were an extinction, a desert heat
A blind illness of my anxiety

Faster (from Holy Bible, 1994)

The first time you see yourself naked you cry
Soft skin now acne, foul breath, so broken
He loves me truly this mute solitude I'm draining
I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing

Sleep can't hide the thoughts splitting through my mind
Shadows aren't clean, false mirrors too many people awake
If you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down
I've been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else

I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer
I spat out Plath and Pinter
I am all the things that you regret
A truth that washes that learnt how to spell, learnt to spell

Die in the Summertime (from Holy Bible, 1994)

Scratch my leg with a rusty nail, sadly it heals
Colour my hair but the dye grows out
I can't seem to stay a fixed ideal

Childhood pictures redeem, clean and so serene
See myself without ruining lines
Whole days throwing sticks into streams

The Girl Who Wanted to Be God (from Everything Must Go, 1996)

There are no sunsets just silence
You could see that she was true and faithless
But see through the future and forget all the lies
Black out the words for the blind have eyes

I am the girl who wanted to be God
I am the girl who wanted to be God

Hold me she said love me to death

You Stole the Sun From My Heart (from This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, 1998)

Drinking - water to stay thin
Or is it to purify
I love you all the same

But there's no - no real truce with my fury
You don't have to believe me
I love you all the same

Intravenous Agnostic (from Know Your Enemy, 2001)

Cosmetic - polemic
Distinguished by relics
Destructive aesthetic
Intravenous agnostic 

Dismayed - dispossessed
Life becomes Calvinist
So sparkle and believe
Linguistics die easily

Pedestal (from Why So Sad single, 2001)

I put you on a pedestal
I look at you, you're beautiful
I put you on a pedestal
I feel ok just for a while

Put you on a pedestal
Put you where you belong
Put you on a pedestal
Put me in my own heaven

Willing to be put in my place
Willing to live in this space
Put you on a pedestal
Put you there, just standing still

Pedestal, put you on a pedestal
You make me feel, make me feel celestial

I Live to Fall Asleep (from Lifeblood, 2004)

I live to fall asleep
It's when I stop the hate
I never want to dream
It infiltrates beauty
I live to fall asleep
Regenerate and sin
Skin so tense gives in
I've lived enough to kill

So lazy lazy lazy
Chuck down all the pills
Needed to remember how and why to live
Oh, when did you decide that sleep could save your life
How could you become another boy struck dumb
How could you become another boy struck dumb with love

I live to fall asleep

Underdogs (from Send Away the Tigers, 2007)

This one's for the freaks
The beaten down and crushed
The shy and withdrawn
Or just out of touch

May you stay like freaks
May you make mistakes
May your will never break
For underdogs revenge is sweet
Revenge is sweet

And like the underdogs we are
Shining bright but now disappeared
And like the underdogs we are
Passing like some fading stars
Like some fading stars

Your Love Alone Is Not Enough (from Send Away the Tigers, 2007)

Your love alone - is not enough not enough not enough
It's what you felt - it's what you said what you said what you said

You said the sky would fall on you - fall on you fall on you
Through all the pain your eyes stayed blue - they stayed blue baby blue

But your love alone won't save the world
You knew the secret of the universe
Despite it all you made it worse
It left you lonely
It left you cursed

Autumnsong (from Send Away the Tigers, 2007)

Wear your eyes as dark as night
Paint your face with what you like
Wear your love like it is made of hate
Born to destroy and born to create

So when you hear this autumn song
Clear your heads and get ready to run
So when you hear this autumn song
Remember the best times are yet to come

Peeled Apples (from Journal For Plague Lovers, 2009)

The more I see the less I scream
The figure 8 inside out is infinity
The naked lightbulb is always wrong
They make and break complete
Then they blow it to kingdom come

Riderless horses on Chomsky's Camelot
Bruises on my hands from digging my nails out
A series of images against you and me
Trespass your torment  if you are what you want to be

All is Vanity (from Journal For Plague Lovers, 2009)

Haven't shaved for days seek the appearance of delay
Luxury of one more dye, Pretend humility the ugly lie
I would prefer no choice 
One bread one milk one fruit that's all
I refuse to only want one truth
I really don't mind being lied too

It's not what's wrong it's what right
Makes me feel like I'm talking a foreign language sometimes
It's not what's wrong it's what's right
It's a fact of life, sunshine.

Condemned to Rock & Roll (from Generation Terrorists, 1992)

No innocent exit when hope dies
And claustrophobia buys my mind
I ran to breathe contagious lies
No reasons for just living life
Ripcord opens but my soul is cold
With you I never felt more alone
Skin never sweating dignity
Kept my line beneath ecstasy

This fragile prison of sanity
An ocean wave to death babe
Masochistic love going nowhere
You're nothing, pestilience, a seed

Lips I kiss just another plague
Love can't fix the hole they made
Condemned to rock n'
Oblivions all we know

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