Music has an amazing ability to touch our souls in ways that nothing else in life can. Music is memory and we connect events to songs and sounds. A fragment of a riff can take you back to an entirely different place and time. A beat can be a portal to a different part of your life. Lyrics are often indelibly etched into our souls and may have a poignant resonance that rings eternally inside us. So for my first entry into a new section, ‘Song That Made Us’ I would like to submit the Manic Street Preachers – ‘Faster.’
One of my favourite songs, this is something I can listen to repeatedly. Occasional listeners of the Manics will be familiar with their late nineties output in which they embraced a wider audience. My favourite work from them comes from a little earlier and is from their 1994 album, The Holy Bible. Released prior to the disappearance of the band’s rhythm guitarist and lyricist, Richey Edwards, the album deals with a gulf of deep and challenging issues. From anorexia to the holocaust, the band touch on it all.
The lyrics to Faster can be a bit tricky to catch. Richey’s unnatural writing style did not lend itself easily to music. Stand-out lyrics include ‘if you stand out like a nail then you will be knocked down,’ ‘I know I believe in nothing, but it is my nothing’ and, ‘I’ve been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else’.
‘I am all the things that you regret a truth that washes and learnt how to spell. ‘
‘So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything’.
I’d like to hear about your go-to songs. What inspires you? Throw me some comments below…
Image was taken by me at Cardiff Motorpoint Arena; May 2018