MANIC STREET PEACHERS – Grand Mixed Emotions Opus ‘EVERYTHING MUST GO’ Released 30 Years Ago

Significant longplayers from yesteryear

20 May 2026

Welsh heroes MANIC STREET PREACHERS released their
4th album EVERYTHING MUST GO on 20 May 1996, today
30 years ago.

The first album without guitarist/lyricist Richey Edwards,
who disappeared mysteriously in February the year before.

Nicky Wire (bassist, lyricist) in an interview with The Guardian in 2016: “We always
wanted to be massive. It would have been great for Richey to have been with us at those
huge gigs. That’s the real sadness.
It’s great that he is on the record with some of his lyrics thoug.


Manics on the cover of NME in 1994

James Dean Brandfield (Vocalist, guitarist) in the same interview: “Look, let’s get in
a room together as a band rather than as friends, and see what the dynamic is like without Richey. Writing a song like A Design for Life was a massive relief: it was the only way we could
be ourselves again.”

The record peaked at #2 in the UK.

NME said: “You leave feeling privileged to have experienced such a life-affirming
and tuneful bout of self-counselling, and you feel it’s done them good as well.

‘Everything Must Go’ punches at its own heavy, emotional weight – of recent memory only Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’ can spar in the same ring – but as the right hand pounds you with desolation, the left follows through with a tentative and gentle tickle of optimism.”

TUTV: My all-Manics-time favorite album. A grand mixed emotions opus. The first LP without the sadly missed Richey Edwards. Everything Must Go felt and still feels like a heart and soul tribute to him.”

KEY SINGLE

ALBUM


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MANIC STREET PREACHERS Released Their Iconic Single ‘A DESIGN FOR LIFE’ Today 30 Years Ago

Top singles from the past

15 April 2026

Welsh luminaries MANIC STREET PREACHERS (1986 – present / 15 studio albums, so far) released their immortal classic single A DESIGN OF LIFE on 15 April 1996, today 30 years ago.

The title was inspired by Joy Division‘s debut EP, An Ideal For Living.

The opening line of the song, ‘Libraries gave us power’, was inspired by the famous aphorism Knowledge Is Power engraved in stone above the top floor central window
of the library in Pillgwenlly, Newport, 15 miles from the band’s hometown of Blackwood.

The words are attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, English
philosopher and statesman from the 16th century.

The next line, ‘then work came and made us free‘, refers to the German slogan Arbeit Macht Frei that featured above the gates of Nazi concentration camps and which had been used previously by the band in their song “The Intense Humming of Evil” on the album The Holy Bible.

The song featured on their 4th longplayer, Everything Must Go, the first
without Richey Edwards, who disappeared in 1995 and was declared dead
in 2008.

It peaked at #2, in both the UK and Scotland.

“Libraries gave us power
Then work came and made us free
What price now
For a shallow piece of dignity

I wish I had a bottle
Right here in my dirty face
To wear the scars
To show from where I came

We don’t talk about love
We only wanna get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end”

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HISTORY – 15 April 1996 – MANIC STREET PREACHERS Release Their Classic…

15 April 2019

Twenty-three years ago, on 15 April 1996, Welsh legends MANIC STREET PREACHERS released A DESIGN FOR LIFE. One of those once in a lifetime classics you can listen to forever and ever. The timeless song featured on Everything Must Go, the first album without Richey Edwards  who disappeared the year before on 1st February 1995.

A Design For Life peaked at #2 on the UK singles chart and despite
the group’s countless other masterpiece songs this lifelike diamond is,
to Turn Up The Volume‘s manics hooked ears, the 24 karat gold pièce de
résistance
of their impressive and incomparable canon. Impossible to
get tired of this authentic standout beauty…

We don’t talk about love
We only want to get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end

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