A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun

its based on JG Ballards 1996 book Cocaine Nights. its about how to we keep our minds active when we are pluged into a fake world of TV and services.

"A billion balconies facing the sun; still, it means a final goodbye to wars and ideologies. But how do you energize people, give them some sense of community? A world lying on it's back is vulnerable to any cunning predator."

Could it be about TV and the vapid, comatose-like way people stare at it all day long, letting it turn your brain to mush, and how it is used to control people, eg: through propaganda and advertising? 'To consume boredom everyday' could possibly be a comment on advertisements offering more consumer goods people are told will dramatically improve their lives but don't, that just bring more boredom?

'Very inspired by John Gay, the philosopher... and JG Ballard's quote about everyone being their own movie star, and he said this in '56 whatever, '62, and I think the phrase is JG Ballard's- "A Billion Balconies Facing The Sun", and there's some of my favourite lines in there, y'know, it's just that idea of all our pleasures' virtual, we've finally found away to consume boredom everyday, just that idea of the minutiae of life being displayed for everyone to see, really, when it's just utterly tedious if you're living it, let alone expecting someone else to do it, and I do think it's the start... the drums- it's supposed to sound like Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac, but it's one of the most terse lyrics on the record.'

• Nicky Wire

This song, like many by the Manic Street Preachers, is about the 'spectacle' as described in Guy Debord's 1967 essay 'The Society of the Spectacle'.

Obviously this was meant to be for "It's Not War"... Whoops, it's late... leave me alone! AAAHH!

'A billion lies becoming the truth' could refer to internet rumours, eg about celebrities, that are spread around and pushed forward as truths.

'We found expression for our hate' could be about people, happy with the distance and vague anonymity, posting hate comments on sites like Facebook and Twitter, airing their bigotry around. 'Without any kind of consequence' might have been true in 2010, but is now less so, if all the news reports and government hacking is anything to go by.

The song is about the internet.

nah, internet.

yeah, definitely the internet.

Funnily enough, I thought quite a few songs of the new album refer to internet culture - except for this one. It seemed to me they were talking about the media driven divide between Eastern and Western countries and how we are continuously reminded 'they're different from us' through the way in which reporting is localised. Regardless of whether countries are 'at war' or not, there's often a threatening angle in the way foreign countries are represented through how they practice religion or specifically with the Manics in mind, whether they're communist or not. for example.... "The End Of Love" is to me the end of tolerance. It's far more appealing in the media world to maintain the idea of a divide despite no actual waring. The US and Russia comes to mind... They stopped fighting years ago, but there's hardly ever a report on Russia that doesn't mention 'reds' or the 'cold war'.