Manic Street Preachers

Growing up against the backdrop of the miner's strike, listening to punk rock, reading William Burroughs and studying Lenin, the four schoolmates from Blackwood, South Wales were never average working class kids. Alienated and brimming with political rage, they blazed a trail of androgynous glamour, heartfelt sloganeering and teenage angst on debut album Generation Terrorists (1992). A darker side emerged on The Holy Bible (1994) as chief lyricist Richey Edwards became increasingly depressed. Edwards vanished in 1995 and though his body was never found, he was officially presumed dead in 2008. The remaining members continued as a trio, bouncing back with the No 1 single Design For Life and album Everything Must Go (1996). If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (1998) was their first UK No 1 single and the album This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours also hit No 1. Maintaining their popularity, they used Richey's final lyrics, written shortly before his disappearance, on their ninth studio album Journal For Plague Lovers (2009).