Singles rankings

[gallafield]

Best singles:
1: The Masses Against The Classes (number one, no promotion, two cracking b-sides)
2: If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (number one, two wonderful b-sides in 'prologue' and 'montana'
3: A Design For Life
4: Motorcycle Emptiness
5: Motown Junk

Worst singles:
1: The Love Of Richard Nixon (poor choice of comeback single, two poor b-sides in 'everything will be' and 'everyone knows/nobody cares'
2: Little Baby Nothing
3: Revol
4: Indian Summer
5: Love's Sweet Exile
Not that I dislike any of these songs, I just think there are better songs on each album than these ones

Should have been singles:
1: Prologue To History
2: 1985
3: Send Away The Tigers
4: Archives Of Pain
5: Forever Delayed

Underrated singles:
1: It's Not War Just The End Of Love
2: You're Love Alone Is Not Alone (cracking comeback single, with bloody brilliant b-sides, especially 'boxes and lists')
3: There By The Grase Of God (such a shame it was used as the token new song on a greatest hits, deserved a better place in the manic's catalogue)
4: PCP (forgotten other side of 'faster', but a great song)
5: This Is The Day (seems to be getting a lot of flak at the moment, but in a contractually obliged compilation, it makes sense by the band not to waste a new song, a la 'there by the grace of god', and use another cover.

[Dancing Kirby]

Six solo tracks that show Nicky and JDB in an infinitely better light than the last six mass communication singles on NT.

01. Bobby Untitled
02. Still a Long Way To Go
03. Everything Fades
04. Which Way to Kyffin
05. Bad Boys & Painkillers
06. You Will Always Be My Home

[riot_star]

Originally Posted by Midlands_Junk

I like There By the Grace of God, but I don't think it's a very good single and it's the same with SIS. I really can't stand Everything Must Go though.

[Scarecrow]

Originally Posted by Noisy Cat

The mods should rename this thread:

"Let's all slag off everything released since 1996 in order to show what hardcore fans we are"

Not forgetting those who voted for Suicide Is Painless.

Originally Posted by Ermintrude the Cow

Should have been singles:
Removables
Condemned to Rock n Roll

Singles? Really!?

Since everyone else has done a top five as well as a bottom five:

1. P.C.P.
2. There By The Grace Of God
3. Life Becoming A Landslide
4. A Design For Life
5. Motown Junk

[mfadaptor]

Originally Posted by proevpete

You suck at life my friend.

Yes, but let's try and stay on topic. Anyway, top five 'should have been' singles.

1. 1985
2. Prologue To History
3. Intravenous Agnostic
4. Sorrow 16
5. 4 Ever Delayed

I can think of 4 or 5 from 'Journal For Plague Lovers' but do like the way those songs hang together as a complete piece of work. Also, I see 'JCEQT' as a pseudo-single of sorts (proper video, airplay). See also: 'Judge Yr'self'. I think they got it more or less right with the pre-1996 singles.

[Ermintrude the Cow]

Originally Posted by NasalScarecrow

Singles? Really!?

Yes, really

[Inglorious]

Worst five.
Everything Must Go
Let Robeson Sing
Life Becoming A Landslide
She Is Suffering
Little Baby Nothing

Not including the ones off Postcards obviously...

[Blixa]

Worst:
1. Autumn Song - DONE TO YOUR HAIR DONE TO YOUR HAIR DONE TO YOUR HAIR. This song could've worked if they'd spent more time on it, done it more differently, given up, and written a better one that didn't go on about hair and rip off Guns and Roses. When the Manics aim for anthemic, bless them, it sometimes sounds like it's designed for the kind of people who take the chorus to A Design For Life at face value - a call to get drunk and smash shit up.

2. Some Kind Of Nothingness - What a waste of Ian McCulloch. Get him in, then drown him out with a gospel choir. Nicky's original demo is great, too. It's a good song, I just can't stand the album/single version with the life sucked out of it.

3. (It's Not War) Just The End of Love - I'm not slagging off Postcards as an album, the single choices were just horrendous. Unless the Manics idea of mass communication is "People buy bland shit, maybe we should make some!". The band are at their best when they're not afraid to alienate people. Tolerate was a big hit about the Spanish civil war. This is about nothing : to feel forgiveness, you've gotta forgive. Come on Nicky, when the likes of Snow Patrol offer platitudes that empty you slag them off, and rightly so. We know you can do better.

4. This Is The Day - Divorced from the video...not having it. The last shameless cash in, I mean, greatest hits, was promoted with a genuinely good tie in single and a gorgeous token new track (Door To The River). This time around, it's a cover version of a song that doesn't suit them done in generic "Everything Must Go/SATT model of the band" mode. Poor, not even interesting enough to be the worst.

5. So Why So Sad - Nice idea, actually, just really didn't work.

Best:
1. Stay Beautiful - To me this is what defines the Manics, when the bombast and knowledge they can be Big and Important has some humour mixed in, and isn't jaded and self conscious "mass communication". Yeah, mass communication to your existing fans. Was anyone converted into a Manics fan by Postcards, by the way?

2. A Design For Life - Not just "important to the band so therefore one of the best", it's genuinely brilliant. The joyous moment where the strings hit in, the fact that it all means something. It's beautiful.

3. Postcards From A Young Man - Not their best album, but this one of their best tracks, controversial as that may be. One of my favourites, anyway. There's a lot crammed into the space of the song. When the choir and strings build to a crescendo done well this time and it's all rushing to oblivion at the end you really believe it despite all that surrounds, they won't give up and they won't give in.

4. Faster - Hard to sum it up without being pretentious. It's just really, really something quite special. Every word is as important as the word before.

5. Roses In The Hospital - There are better Manics singles but this really makes me smile, it may rip off Bowie but it's catchy and full of energy.

Just missed getting in - Everything Must Go and Empty Souls. Wanted to include Motown Junk but the "urban hell" line makes it difficult to take remotely seriously. Blackwood may be dull, but it's far from urban hell.

Should have been a single:
1. 1985 - Seriously. How was this not a single?And you just know that if Lifeblood had sold Send Away The Tigers figures the band would've kept on in this direction indefinitely.

2. Marlon JD and 3. Peeled Apples - Nevermind releasing no singles off Journal, some of that stuff could've done pretty well.

4. Ready For Drowning - See 1985. Big and anthemic without being stupid, universal without being patronising, gorgeous organ line and some of Nicky's best lyrics.

5. Golden Platitudes - Same as above. If Sony are picking the singles, they want to hire someone with ears and a pulse to do it.

May be a long self indulgent ego toss off of a post but still better than an NME feature would be, although most primates writing with their own shit are overqualified for that particular magazine.

[almostfamous]

Bottom feeders, to the gallows with thee....
1. This is The Day (they so obviously don't give a f*ck about this but we "The Fans" are supposed to though eh?)
2. Indian Summer (such an embarrassing "I know lads, let's make Design For Life 2 ; The New Batch" idea. Go to your rooms boys and think about what you've done, etc).
3. So Why So Sad (The wurlitzer solo. Such a time capsule of the season when everyone indie had "a Beach Boys element to their music").
4. Its Not War, etc (Riff eternally on a loop behind the following "THIS Bank Holiday Monday ALL our sofas are half price, yes, HALF price, this bank holiday Monday at DFS")
5. Autumnsong (The lyrics, really.)

Top Cats, the undisputable leader of tha gang....
1. Faster (Almost makes everything else they do redundant and queuing up at the Job Club, filling out endless forms, moaning about the weather, unshaven in a grubby grey tracksuit, etc).
2. Life Becoming A Landslide (Chaps, I know you got souuuuul).
3. Revol (The band can kick their nappies off 'til the dairylea cows come home, it's ACE and good for leapin' off one's bed scissor kick-stylee).
4. You Love Us (even after 1,503,435 listens still feels like a molotov thru the heart).
5. The Love of Richard Nixon (because for once in their life they took a musical f*cking RISK and I like weird)

Coulda been contenders, instead of a (al)bum (tracks)...
1. My Little Empire (dunno about a single per se but soooo beautiful, raw and achy breaky, oh i see a darkness!)
2. Judge Yr'self (deadly as a switchblade and flooring like a well timed sledgehammer to the knackers)
3. Spectators of Suicide (Stick 'em muthafucka, such a beautiful melody, amazing lyrics, Richey 'N' Nicky as play for today Bonnie 'N' Clyde)
4. Doors Closing Slowly (Anything of JFPL is conversion-level sublime but this is slo-motion black rain, terrifyingly beautiful)
5. Vision Blurred (Visceral, savage Horrors cover that deserves some sort of oversized 'Jim'll Fix It' medallion or at least a certificate of amazing-ness on good paper).

[HunkyDory]

I'll give it a try...

Best singles:
1. Motorcycle Emptiness
2. Life Becoming A Landslide
3. Faster
4. She Is Suffering
5. Roses In The Hospital

Worst singles:
1. Richard Nixon
2. This Is The Day
3. So Why So Sad
4. Your Love Alone
5. Autumnsong

Should have been singles:
1. Judge Yr'self
2. 4st 7lb (ok, maybe not a good choice for a single but it's so brilliant)
3. Yes
4. Marlon J.D.
5. Nobody Loved You

[mfadaptor]

Autumnsong would have been a stone cold 0/10 if it weren't for the rather poignant 'Born to create, born to create, born to create, BORN TO CRE-A-ATE!' part. That bit's inspired. The rest is cunt.

[ZiZi]

Best singles:
1. Motorcycle Emptiness
2. Design For Life
3. Your Love Alone Is Not Enough
4. If You Tolerate This
5. There By The Grace Of God

Worst singles:
1. Love's Sweet Exile
2. Little Baby Nothing
3. Life Becoming A Landslide
4. Suicide Is Painless
5. So Why So Sad

Should have been singles:
1. 1985
2. Peeled Apples
3. Jackie Collins Existential Question Time
4. No Surface All Feeling
5. Golden Platitudes

[mfadaptor]

I'm still looking forward to the previously unreleased 'explicit version' of 'Ocean Spray', with it's previously shorn 'oh, fuck, shit, cunt, bastard, cunting motherfucker' Balearic trance breakdown. It's on Spotify already waiting to be made available.

Good to see 'Life Becoming A Landslide', 'There By The Grace Of God' and 'The Love Of Richard Nixon' faring so well, songs they largely (or in the case of the first, at least until fairly recently) point blank refuse to play live. Please Sir, can we have some more 'Autumnsong'?

[MannyG]

OK here goes.... Top 5 worst in no particular order.

1. Let Robeson Sing - applaud the sentiment but a poor choice of single. But we wouldn't have "JDB is flying the kite etc" without it so not all bad.

2. This Is The Day - actually like the track and I'm a big The The fan. But this to promote a huge, potentially massive-selling singles collection??

3. Postcards From A Young Man - Remember how brave releasing Kevin Carter as the 3rd single off EMG was? Long time ago wasn't it?

4. You Stole The Sun From My Heart - Tweet Tweet

5. New Art Riot EP - False start really and should have been miles better. Light years away from Motown Junk.

[Midlands_Junk]

Originally Posted by Blixa

Worst:
1. Autumn Song - DONE TO YOUR HAIR DONE TO YOUR HAIR DONE TO YOUR HAIR. This song could've worked if they'd spent more time on it, done it more differently, given up, and written a better one that didn't go on about hair and rip off Guns and Roses. When the Manics aim for anthemic, bless them, it sometimes sounds like it's designed for the kind of people who take the chorus to A Design For Life at face value - a call to get drunk and smash shit up.

2. Some Kind Of Nothingness - What a waste of Ian McCulloch. Get him in, then drown him out with a gospel choir. Nicky's original demo is great, too. It's a good song, I just can't stand the album/single version with the life sucked out of it.

3. (It's Not War) Just The End of Love - I'm not slagging off Postcards as an album, the single choices were just horrendous. Unless the Manics idea of mass communication is "People buy bland shit, maybe we should make some!". The band are at their best when they're not afraid to alienate people. Tolerate was a big hit about the Spanish civil war. This is about nothing : to feel forgiveness, you've gotta forgive. Come on Nicky, when the likes of Snow Patrol offer platitudes that empty you slag them off, and rightly so. We know you can do better.

4. This Is The Day - Divorced from the video...not having it. The last shameless cash in, I mean, greatest hits, was promoted with a genuinely good tie in single and a gorgeous token new track (Door To The River). This time around, it's a cover version of a song that doesn't suit them done in generic "Everything Must Go/SATT model of the band" mode. Poor, not even interesting enough to be the worst.

5. So Why So Sad - Nice idea, actually, just really didn't work.

I like you. You're right, you are.