You Love Us

I can't believe nobody's commented on this. It was the quintessential manics song in the days before Richey's disappearance and one of their classics. Love the "our voices are for real" bit. Any true manics fan should understand what i mean there, even if they weren't necessarily talking about that at all.

Simply put, its an ironic song about the media. The manics were famous for winding up and manipulating the media for their own purpose.

"We are not your sinners Our voices are for real"

The manics deliberately dressed themselves up as 'sinners' who provided the headlines for hysterical journalists (such as Steve Lamacq at NME). But the irony is that they are not these sinners, they are for real. So in a media sense they aren't for real as their 'sin' is fake, but in every other sense they are for real as it is the media which is false.

The 'you love us' lines in the chorus, are directed at the same people, the media loved the manics because they provided a source of hysteria, headlines and a focus for people to idolise. What the manics knew ("we realised" "we won't die of devotion") was that they were idolising something which wasn't real (a "statue" or a "uniform").

Interesting that if you throw acid in the face of a statue it would disfigure it, ironically making it more real as it is fake in the first place.

'Same PR problem as EST' is an abbreviation of 'Same Public Relations problem as Electric Shock Treatment', the negative, repulsed attitude many people take to electrocuting the mentally ill as a 'cure'... also shows how shocking the Manics themselves are.

I thought the chorus was satirising the fear of subliminal messages.

But the whole song is definitely a stab at how the media totally put them on a pedestal

As well as a way of poking fun at the media I think, rather like Adam and the Ant's song Antmusic, it is a big hit to really introduce them to the world- "Hi, we're the Manic Street Preachers, we're brilliant song-writers, controversially socialist and alternative and bloody fantastic so WATCH OUT, we're gonna leave you gasping for air!" Oh yes.

used to cover it with my band

You love us like a holocaust! LOL

Simply put, it's about fascism.