My favourite list of MSP songs (1 CD version)

(Originally posted on Sunday, 5 June 2016; updated most recently on 2 September 2017)

The whole my favourite list of Manic Street Preachers songs can be found here:
My favourite list of Manic Street Preachers songs

Here is my favourite list of Manic Street Preachers songs (1 CD version) – album versions of all the songs [with slight modifications]:

1. The View from Stow Hill
2. Builder of Routines
3. Don't Be Evil
4. Marlon J.D.
5. Little Girl Lost
6. Indian Summer
7. Empty Souls
8. There by the Grace of God
9. Epicentre [without the hidden song at the end]
10. Black Dog on My Shoulder
11. Interiors (Song for Willem de Kooning)
12. La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh) [with a louder beginning]
13. Little Baby Nothing
14. Autumnsong
15. Ghost of Christmas
16. All We Make Is Entertainment
17. 30-Year War
18. Black Square [without the annoying beginning]


Below there are my favourite lyrics from every songs and my additional comments to some of the songs.


1. The View from Stow Hill

Music: The BEAUTIFUL start of the song is the reason why I HAD to start with this song. And this is why the order of the first 12 songs is chronologically reversed.
Lyrics: I never do anything just because many other people do it and this is why I have never had Facebook or Twitter account, which explains why I LOVE the lyrics:

Look up to the skies
Avoid the casual litter
Running from the pitiful nihilism

The misguided tweets
The sad facebooking
Cheapness surrounds me
But I am not looking


2. Builder of Routines

Lyrics: The lyrics toward the end are soo true, but only more mature people can appreciate them:

How I hate middle age
In between acceptance and rage
Democracy sure made a fool out of me
But I am the builder of routines


3. Don't Be Evil

The lines have all been blurred
To the point of no return
With normal people living normal lives
Normal things seen through normal eyes

Don't be evil, just be corporate
Fool the world with your own importance
Portray your tedium for the world to see
Your own movie star and it's for free


4. Marlon J.D.

Trivia: Please, take a look at the end of this post:
Marlon J.D.

Learn to live without clutter
To live without luxury
Sometimes I envy them
Goodnight yourself, Marlon J.D.

He did not defend himself
He didn't even raise his hand
I will not beg because
This is how I am


05. Little Girl Lost

Lyrics: Every time I hear this song, especially the first two lines of the lyrics below, I feel as if it were about me.

You've been trying too hard
You've been reading too much and too fast
You've been lost for too long
You've been looking for hope so soon

(…)

I put the colour back in your eyes
I put the feeling back in your tired eyes
You've been avoiding the truth
But you will make your way back soon enough


6. Indian Summer

Lyrics: One of the best lyrics ever written by Manics, at least to me. I have to quote most of them.

If God persists
Persists in saying yes
I guess we have
We have to test ourselves
Maybe this summer
Will come and clear our minds
To find the impulse
To love the sunshine

I guess we have to test
Until there's nothing left
We said the truth was fixed
It's lost without a trace

Whose crime is eternity
When time lost is certainty
The Indian Summer

Maybe this time
We'll kiss and we'll not shake hands
Indian Summer
Still and unbroken
And leave all this
Material beneath
Remember the reasons
The reason that made us be


7. Empty Souls

Lyrics: There are many people who can't find their place in the world and listening to this song on one hand makes me feel better, because I did find my place, with my wife and my children, but on the other hand I feel anguish for those who did not find their place.
Trivia: The single features altered lyrics – the original line from the studio album “Collapsing like the Twin Towers” was replaced by “Collapsing like dying flowers”. I prefer the original comparison.

For empty souls will stand alone
Shivering like black-eyed dogs
Waiting to be taken home
Where that is they only know

Exposed to a truth we don't know
Collapsing like the Twin Towers
Falling down like April showers
Colossal endless like a marathon
God knows what makes the comparison
God knows what makes the comparison
For empty souls
For empty souls


8. There by the Grace of God

And all the drugs in the world
Can't save us from ourselves
Victims with the saddest hearts
Passing by the grace of God
There by the grace of God

With grace we will suffer
With grace we shall recover
There by the grace of God
There by the grace of God


9. Epicentre

We use ourselves like politicians
For all the money and indecision - indecision
Indecision

Like a stunned fox - with memory loss
A sad numb creature - I worship the painkiller
It is my epicentre
It is my epicentre

(...)

You don't drink - you don't get high
So make sure you take your medicine boy
You don't drink - you don't get high
So make sure you take your medicine boy


10. Black Dog on My Shoulder

Music: The song features strings and one whole minute at the end is purely instrumental. BEAUTIFUL.
Lyrics: The phrase “black dog” is a metaphor for depression (the illness).

There's a black dog on my shoulder again
Licking my neck and saying she's my friend
Solitude the one thing that I really miss
Guess my life is a compromise

This black dog is out of control
My mouth is so dry
My eyes are shut tight
There's a black dog a coming tonight
Black dog's a-coming tonight


11. Interiors (Song for Willem de Kooning)

Say you can remember
Say where is the tomorrow
Say where you're coming from
Say what you have left us

Are we too tired to try and understand
That nothing is nothing on that we depend
Take my hand together and we will cry
It really makes no difference to
What we see inside
What we see inside


12. La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)

Music: The song features one of the most enjoyable guitar solos I have ever heard. Fantastic!
Trivia: The lyrics “La tristesse durera” are reportedly the last words of Vincent van Gogh, but without the final word “toujours”. The whole sentence “La tristesse durera toujours” means “The sadness will last forever”.

I sold my medal, it paid a bill
It sells at market stalls
Parades Milan catwalks

Oh, the sadness will never go
Will never go away
Baby it's here to stay


13. Little Baby Nothing

Trivia: The song features the voice of Traci Lords – a former pornstar. She did a really good job singing in this song.

My mind is dead, everybody love's me
Wants a slice of me
Hopelessly passive and compatible

Need to belong, oh the roads are scary
So hold me in your arms
I wanna be your only possession

(...)

You are pure, you are snow
We are the useless sluts that they mould
Rock 'n' roll is our epiphany
Culture, alienation, boredom and despair


14. Autumnsong

Now baby, what've you done to your hair?
Is it just the same time of year
When you think that you don't really care?
Now baby, what have you done to your hair?

So when you hear this autumnsong
Clear your heads and get ready to run
So when you hear this autumnsong
Remember the best times are yet to come


15. Ghost of Christmas

Trivia: The Tomahawk mentioned in the lyrics below is a kind of bicycle.

Christmas day stuck in the seventies
Play all day with your Scalextrics
Oh my god, I got a Tomahawk
How sweet life can be

No X-Box and no computers
We just used our imagination
A leather football was perfection
What more could you want?


16. All We Make is Entertainment

All we make is entertainment
A sad indictment of what we are good at
We're all part of the grand delusion

All we make is entertainment
It's so damn easy and inescapable
We're so post-modern, we're so post-everything


17. 30 Year War

It's the longest running joke in history
To kill the working classes
In the name of liberty

(...)

And the endless parade of Old Etonian scum
Line the front benches “so what is to be done?”
All part of the same establishment
I ask you again “what is to be done?”


18. Black Square

Let us overcome our endless progress
“Art is never modern for art is eternal”
When every single day you’re haunted by perfection
Paintings are never finished but merely abandoned

Let us wipe the slate clean let us dig our own graves
Let us choose our own wars and make our mistakes
“Free yourselves from the tyranny of objects”
Purged of all colour the purest abstraction