The View From Stow Hill
 

Seeing as a thread exists for all the other songs on the album, I'm surprised that no one's started one for this yet!

Great song, like it a lot. Having heard the song a number of times now, the tweeting/facebooking line doesn't appear to be about us (the fans) but instead about the residents of Newport, of which the subject matter is about.

Not sure how everyone else feels on this?? Discuss!

As a Newport lad myself I find a lot to this song. I don't mind the facebook lyric at all. It could be a great song to sing acoustically at Newport if they play there again.

It's one of the weaker songs for me to be honest. Maybe it just hasn't clicked yet, but It's probably the song that grabs me the least.

I initially thought that SPLAM was the weakest song, but it does at least have the decency to be really fucking funny :D

Can defiantly agree with this. A lot of newporters do seem to facebook a lot of daily mail nonsense!

Listening to Nicky on XFM last night has improved this for me a bit. It's growing on me, but it's still my least favourite on the album by some distance. But for me even the poorest track on Futurology is not bad, such is the quality of the whole album.

I like it. Sounds very KYE. A bit royal corrispondant esqu.

Stow Hill is surely in the upper echelon for me. For a massive Lifeblood fan, this sounds like a more U2 "Solitude Sometimes Is", with even nicer production than Lifeblood. (Loved the way that record sounded). I even like the misguided tweets / sad facebooking part - oh boy does that melody soar. Best vocals of the record I'd say.

Wholly agreed. Royal Correspondent was the first song that came to mind when I heard this.

I like this track a lot more than I thought I would. The melody is beautiful.

This one didn't impress me so much initially, but it's quite a grower. Sounds like parts of Lifeblood and KYE only with better production values. I've got no problem with the "Facebooking" line either.

It's grown on me too and the tweets/Facebooking line doesn't bother me so much now either.

The tweeting/facebooking thing is the first time Nicky's referenced modern technology in a way that isn't bothersomely cringy. It jumps out initially because it's so direct but it's not a bad lyric in itself.

Anyway, yes, wonderful song and gorgeous production/sound design. Would be an excellent closer for the album, shame about Mayakovsky popping up right after it. Based on the demo, I'm pretty sure this was originally a part of the acoustic sessions until they decided to flesh it out.

I like intro. Cold air, bullet holes, hope and stuff. Nice track, sounds like it came from Lifeblood era.

I like this song. I too don't mind find the social media lines - the mood of the song and the vocal delivery for those lines means that they don't sound clunky to me. Had they been in SPLAM though, then perhaps they would have, no not quite as bad as in that N-Dubz song.

Reference to the Chartist Uprising I'm guessing?

Wouldn't have been out of place on The Great Western this one

This wasn't a song that grabbed me on first listen, but now I really am enjoying it a lot.

I think if you just focus that one line of the chorus "The misguided tweets, the sad facebooking", the lyrics sound a bit crap. But listen to the lyrics of the whole chorus and it's really good.

I think some lyrics need the context of the rest of the song (or at least the rest of the verse or chorus) to really get their meaning and impact, this being one of them.

The way James sings "but I'm not looking" in the chorus is just gorgeous. Love it :)

Massive grower of a song, even if the guitar reminds me of Everything But The Girl's 'Missing'.

I love this track, the whole production, the lyrics, tone and the way James delivers it. I totally agree with the links to Lifeblood that other people have said but then I think theres a lot of Futurology that reminds me of Lifeblood.

In re "sad facebooking": it's amazing how much having James Dean Bradfield singing your lyrics can rescue them.

(Great song, but classic Nicky in making you shed a tear and then cringe in the space of a few lines . . .)

i love the misguided tweets/sad facebooking line. facebook has become a verb anyway.. *i'll facebook you* so why not facebooking

It's a fucking sad state of affairs when we're using brand names as verbs, so if that's what Wire is getting at then yeah I agree (although I suspect it's not).

I'll use it again as a verb … I don't facebook :cool:

Hoovering, anyone?

Xerox days

What about it? It's wrong.

Properly enjoyed this the last couple of times. Still hate the tweeting/facebooking line though. It's not that I don't get it, I just don't like it. But the rest of the song has grown on me.

Why is it wrong?

Anyway my point was it's not a new thing, that one must have been around for decades.

Hoovering is fine - it's an accepted word/term

huge lol, just sayin' :D

That sucks!

(sorry)

I know it's widely accepted, but I still think there are reasons to avoid it.

Hoovering only makes sense if you know what a hoover is (a brand of vaccum cleaner). I'd wager that plenty of English speakers in other countries would not be familiar with hoover in the way that we use it, i. e. to clean the carpet. (It's also confusing because the other widely accepted meaning of hoover as a verb is to eat something quickly. So if you say "I hoovered up the bread crumbs" it could mean you ate them or you vaccumed them. No such confusion if you say "I vaccumed up the bread crumbs.")

Same with other trademark nouns that have become verbs, like Photoshop. "I photoshopped our holiday pictures" only makes sense if the person/people you are talking to knows what Photoshop is. Same goes for Xerox/Facebook etc, it's not inclusive language. I don't see why you'd ever use a brand name that has become a verb when you can use an existing generic verb and be more widely understood. "I facebooked her" is far less clear in meaning than "I sent her a message on Facebook". In the latter you don't need to know what Facebook is to at least get some idea that you are communicating with the subject of the sentence. In the first example, unless you knew what Facebook was, you would assume that someone had been whacked in the face with a book.

I guess, but that's true of any colloquialisms or slang. I don't really see it being wrong or needs avoiding, rather that language evolves over time to pick up these kinds of things. 'facebooked her' is not clear in meaning, but xerox, hoover etc only have one meaning.

I mean, velcro, sellotape, Fedex, rollerblade to name a few i thought of and googled, which in itself is a useful one ;)

ya know whatever you think of the rights or wrongs, or loveliness or ugliness of the terms, I think someone buying a Manics album would probably manage to figure it out... I mean it's not exactly the most cryptic or obscure wordage to ever appear in a Manics song is it? I'm going to guess that Facebook is something most people listening to Futurology will be aware of... Actually probably more people will have heard of Facebook than actual Futurology... which I would find truly "sad".

I take your point, but I don't think a lot of younger people would know what "to xerox" meant and I had to look up "to fedex", is it more of an Americanism? It seems that there are much clearer ways to express those actions to a general audience.

Rollerblade I will concede is pretty useful!

I wasn't talking about Manics fans specifically. I would hope that most people would be able to have a fairly educated stab without resorting to the internet as to what futurology was about. The clue is kind of in the name.

Yeah, Fedex is an americanism, but i think every american would understand what it meant, it's synonymous with 'to ship' or 'to mail', using Fedex.