SWSS and FTS were the first singles off KYE that's why they charted top 10

Found That Soul is amazing (I voted it number 1 in the Manics Chart recently too!). So Why So Sad was an odd choice I always thought, but KYE is a very odd album. There aren't too many natural singles actually when you think about it.

1985 should have been the lead single from Lifeblood. Or at least a single.

Imperial Bodybags would have been a great single from SATT. But I think Your Love Alone was a good choice for lead.

It's Not War is pretty naff. The video was kinda cool though. It's the only album I dislike, but Postcards From a Young Man itself is a fantastic song.

30 Year War could have been great for RTF, but I guess it isn't a good reflection on the album as a whole... but then neither is Show Me The Wonder! But still, no complaints there.

I agree about Europa Geht Durch Mich - should have been lead single. It's just so good.

Europa GDM might not have been an official single, but it got a separate, pre-album release with its own artwork, which is pretty much all a 'single' often is these days anyway!

I emphasise that the question isn't whether FTS or SWSS are good songs - they are - but whether or not they made good singles. They charted well enough (top ten, although something of a drop from the number one that Masses achieved), and I am sure the band wanted to use them to demonstrate the musical breadth of KYE, but at the time, after Masses, they felt - at least to me - rather underwhelming as singles.

Ocean Spray, Let Robeson Sing, Intravenous Agnostic (this in hindsight) and Freedom Of Speech Won't Feed My Children are in my view the most 'natural' singles from that very mixed bag - the latter mainly because the band seemed to consider it one of the 'bigger' songs on KYE (plus it had Kevin Shields on guitar).

I still find it utterly bizarre that Masses wasn't included on KYE (well, outside of Japan) - it would have fit perfectly.

Completely agree. This must be pretty much indisputable now. I'd liked to have seen Litany as a single too (which was originally the plan).

My view is that YLAINE and INWJTEOL were essentially two versions of the same attempt at a (record company-recommended?) marketable radio-friendly chart-topper. I remember liking YLAINE a lot when it came out, but I feel it's aged terribly since then; It's Not War, by contrast, is still okay. I don't feel either is the Manics' best work.

I find it very hard to propose alternative singles from PFAYM and RTF. My favourite track by far from the PFAYM era is actually a b-side (Red Rubber), and my favourite from RTF is rather unoriginal, having been built on a royalty-begging Max Richter sample (Tokyo Skyline).

Good to see plenty of love for Europa Geht Durch Mich and consensus that it should have been/essentially was a single.

Freedom of Speech has a real DIY sound, which to me is excellent, but I'm not sure it would have translated well as a single! They would have probably got top 3 or even number 1 if they'd just released one lead single rather than two. Weren't FTS and SWSS only separated by 20 sales?

It's a great song. The band must have just decided against making it a single. Incidentally, I doubt the record company vetoed it as a single - Masses was spectacularly successful with essentially the same theme, and although the lines about the Dalai Lama, the Beastie Boys and fucking from Paris to Beijing might have had a few at Epic laughing nervously, Revol and Faster both made it to singles.

Something like it. It was a gimmick they probably hadn't thought through in any case. I seem to recall the FTS video - the night vision one - got scarcely any play relative to the SWSS video too.

Apologies for not responding to this.

I agree Imperial Bodybags would have made a wonderful single (and statement), but alas of late we live in an all too censorious age. I could see it being branded all sorts of things by latter-day Mary Whitehouses in the media, and I doubt the band in 2007 (just coming out of the Lifeblood doldrums) would have had the stomach for the controversy and 'how dare you' tabloid-stoked scandal.

Texts from my mum

"Just watching manics (on iPlayer), are all their concerts as good as that one?"

"I walked to work with Motorcycle Emptiness going round in my head"

I may have pointed out that there are numerous bootlegs on the music drive...

Whilst preparing a thread on remixes it just occurred to me that Europa Geht Durch Mich must have originally been planned as a single as it was afforded the two remixes by Erol Alkan.

As Futurology was also afforded a remix (by R. Seiliog), we can conjecture that either a) Walk Me To The Bridge wasn't originally intended to be a single; or b) Futurology and Europa Geht Durch Mich were planned as the only two singles; or c) three singles from Futurology were planned, but these were later reduced to two.

Person at work: "why do I suddenly have Steps in my head"

Me: it's not war just the end of love appears in my head...

If your mum liked that she needs to see their last T in the park appearance... I wanted to climb into the TV ... Think it was the last one .. time tends to blur into one these days

The last (years) one was pretty good, enviably so. They seem play a lot better when things are going well. There's a confidence and energy to the playing.

i have a bunged up nose and a cough and i feel dizzy and generally meh.. it's in this thread cos its the manics' fault.. outdoor gigs tsk

I've been very productive on my day off...

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps8xkz3ioi.jpg

That pie chart reminds me of this:

http://www.damienhirst.com/images/hi...23_c_771_0.jpg