Motorcycle Emptiness

Some songs just stay with you. I hadn't listened to Motorcycle Emptiness from the Manic Street Preachers' first album Generation Terrorists in years when I for some reason started looking at the Manics again this summer. I can't remember what compelled me to do so, but oftentimes it is something I read or see on tv that triggers a memory or a desire to explore some music further. And this summer, Manic Street Preachers became yet another rabbithole for me to fall down into. I remember getting Generation Terrorists way back when it first was released in 1992. I liked it. I liked it a lot. But to me, my interest in the Manics was relatively short lived at that point. 

After rediscovering them, I will say that watching the documentary No Manifesto really changed the way I looked at them. I have a soft spot for friends deciding to get together to play music - and even more so when the same friends are still together making music 34 years after they start and 28 years after they released their first album. It  hasn't been without issues, but I will save that for a later post. To me, the fact that James Dean Bradfield (guitar and vocals), Nicky Wire (bass), and Sean Moore (drums) still play together - and still sound damned good - is really what every band aspire to. On their first three albums, Richey Edwards played rhythm guitar and wrote lyrics with Nicky Wire, so that is the fourth member seen in this video. 

I still won't pretend that I fully understand the lyrics to Motorcycle Emptiness and all the imagry it contains - although I get the theme of consumerism and the hollow pleasures it brings. And I am a huge fan of the final switch from "motorcycle emptiness" to "everlasting nothingness". "Under neon loneliness" indeed.