Blackwood, UK · alt-rock · britpop

Manic Street Preachers

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Welsh rock built on political fury and literary reference — and the best guitar solos in Britpop, three decades of conviction deep.

Manic Street Preachers formed in 1986 at Oakdale Comprehensive School in Blackwood, south Wales, initially with bassist Miles 'Flicker' Woodward alongside Bradfield, Wire and Moore, before Richey Edwards joined as guitarist and lyricist and Wire switched to bass. The band became part of the 1990s Cool Cymru movement alongside other Welsh acts of the period.

Their early singles carried glam and punk energy paired with confrontational sloganeering, built around lyrics about culture, alienation and despair. The first charting single, 'Motown Junk,' arrived in 1991, followed by the albums Generation Terrorists and Gold Against the Soul, before the group narrowed its sound into the bleak, spare Holy Bible.

Edwards disappeared in February 1995, shortly after Holy Bible's release, and was legally presumed dead in 2008. The remaining three took a six-month hiatus before deciding, with the support of Edwards' family, to continue as a trio, a decision that reshaped the band's direction from that point on.

Everything Must Go reached number two on the UK albums chart in 1996, and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours became the band's first number-one album in 1998, producing hits including 'A Design for Life' and 'If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next.'

Across more than three decades the band has sold over ten million albums worldwide, and every studio record has reached the UK Top 20, with This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours and 2021's The Ultra Vivid Lament both hitting number one. Between 1991 and 2010 they placed 34 consecutive singles in the UK Top 40, alongside eleven NME Awards and two Mercury Prize nominations.

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