"Distant Colours" is the second single taken from the

Manic Street Preachers Manic Street Preachers, also known simply as the Manics, are a Wales, Welsh Rock music, rock band formed in Blackwood, Caerphilly, in 1986. The band consists of Nicky Wire (bass guitar, lyrics) and cousins James Dean Bradfield (lead vocals, le ...

' thirteenth album '' Resistance Is Futile'' (2018). It was released on 16 February 2018.

Background

The lyrics were written by vocalist

James Dean Bradfield James Dean Bradfield (born 21 February 1969) is a Welsh singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. He is known for being the lead vocalist and guitarist for the Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. His cousin Sean Moore is a ...

, rather than

Nicky Wire Nicholas Allen Jones (born 20 January 1969), known as Nicky Wire, is a Welsh musician, best known as lyricist, bassist and secondary vocalist of the Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. Prior to the group, Wire studied politics ...

, and inspired by disenchantment and Nye Bevan's old Labour. James said that "Musically, the verse is downcast and melancholic and the chorus is an explosion of disillusionment and tears." The video itself was by their long-standing visual collaborator

Kieran Evans Kieran John Evans (born 8 February 1969) is a Welsh film director and screenwriter whose work includes music videos, film and documentaries. His 2012 film ''Kelly + Victor'', produced by Janine Marmot, saw Evans awarded the BAFTA Award for Out ...

and stars actor Sarah Sayuri. About the political aspect of the song Wire added that "I can't direct my anger at a single thing, politics is so overlapping and everything is so complicated that I think it's really trite to direct it at specific targets" (...) "That's the malaise we find ourselves in. It's the classic case of

Tony Benn Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn (3 April 1925 – 14 March 2014), known between 1960 and 1963 as Viscount Stansgate, was a British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party politician and political activist who served as a Cabinet of the United Kingdom, Cabine ...

being the ultimate icon of socialism, and he never wanted to be in the European Union! Everyone keeps using him as a totem on the left, but are desperate to stay in the EU. People don't know their history, they toss things out there." Talking further about the song Bradfield said that "It was just a song that came together in an amalgam of confusion and dejection at the general election and the American Presidential election," he tells ''Clash''. "I was just trying to kind of trying to figure out how you could define yourself by knowing what your enemy was like you did when you were 16 years old. Which, for me, was 1986, '85, '84. All those years. And I just decided that you couldn't any more because, obviously, the left has fractured, the centre left has fractured, the centre ground was unoccupied..."

Track listing

Personnel

Manic Street Preachers *

– lead vocals, guitar *

– vocals, bass guitar * Sean Moore – drums

Charts

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Distant Colours 2018 singles Manic Street Preachers songs 2018 songs Songs written by Sean Moore (musician) Songs written by Nicky Wire Songs written by James Dean Bradfield