Song of the Day 4/12: Manic Street Preachers, “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next”
Guest post by Nathan Arizona
In times like these, you’d think there’d be more protest songs with lyrics about shooting fascists.
You’d expect more songs with titles like “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next,” though probably not as long.
What we need is a band like the Manic Street Preachers, who stood out in the relatively placid ‘90s with anti-capitalist songs about fighting the power. The Manics launched a string of hits like the one with the unwieldy title I just mentioned. The Brit-pop and shoegaze bands that dominated the decade had other interests.
Leftist politics and social nihilism might not seem a recipe for hit songs, but the Welsh band was hugely popular with audiences as well as critics. They filled arenas, topped record charts, landed on top 10 lists and won prizes. Most of that happened in Britain. They never really broke through over here except with rock critics and historians. The band is still making albums that are well-reviewed but under the radar.
The Manics’ secret to commercial success was combining their radical lyrical sentiments with a big sound and an unfailing sense of melody and dynamics. They started out lean and punk, citing the Clash as a major influence as well as glam rock and even Guns N’ Roses. But their music matured after the disappearance of troubled and erratic original member Richey Edwards in 1995. They also tempered their anarchic real-life punk attitude. The remaining three members were responsible for the more accessible but still political breakthrough albums that came just after Edwards’ disappearance, but always cited him as an abiding presence. Edwards was finally declared legally dead in 2008 but occasional “sightings” continue.
“If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” from 1998 refers in part to the Spanish Civil War, an earlier period of fighting fascists. The song echoes somewhat the Clash’s “Spanish Bombs.” You can ignore the brief remarks by the gray-haired gentleman at the very beginning, though he does speak the truth.
The Manic Street Preachers also wrote songs about relationships, but they were still angry. This concert performance of “You Stole the Sun From My Heart” shows the group at its stadium peak. Singer, guitarist and composer James Dean Bradfield, a Luddite said never to have used e-mail, looks pretty conventional here in 1999. On the other hand, 6-foot-3 bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire is wearing a dress. It’s a thing he did sometimes when he wasn’t being a dad and a huge rugby fan. Go figure. It wasn’t even a pretty one.
