Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!: Day 339 - Manic Street Preachers

Forever Delayed - The Greatest Hits - Manic Street Preachers

Epic

Released 28th October 2002

UK Chart #4

The Remixes

Single Released from Forever Delayed

There By The Grace Of God / Automatik Teknicolour / It's All Gone

October 2002

UK Chart #6

There By The Grace Of God / Unstoppable Salvation / Happy Ending

The album was released in various formats:

2 x LP

1 CD

2 CD

2 CD + DVD

DVD

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Following on from yesterday's post of The Alarm, we turn our attention toward another Welsh band and probably the most successful to come out of Wales, the Manic Street Preachers.

Forever Delayed is the first of three compilations from the band (Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of Manic Street Preachers - 2003 B-Sides & Covers Compilation and National Treasures - The Complete Singles - 2011 being the other two).

The album came in for a bit of stick because of spotlighting their biggest hit singles - which seeing it is a Greatest Hits album seemed almost laughable that people should be complaining about it!

The collection was not well received by NME that stated: "So here it is, The Album That Should Not Exist. To the slogan-smothered, soul-bruised, scarred-for-the-cause skunkpunk heroes of 1991 - the scary/beautiful freaks claiming they'll self-destruct after one six million-selling album - this greatest hits would be musical treachery." I think the NME liked to act like spoiled drama queens and the music police from time to time and clearly were upset that a band they had championed had actually gone on to have some success!

Now, dismissing the naysayers doesn't mean that the album is without fault because one of the most glaring issues is that several songs were edited for length ("Motorcycle Emptiness" - 1 minute and 3 seconds cut, "You Love Us" - 1 minute and 13 seconds cut, "Australia" - 23 seconds cut, "Everything Must Go" - 34 seconds cut, and "The Everlasting" - 2 minutes and 4 seconds cut! "Little Baby Nothing" as well was edited but as it was only 1 second I don't think that was enough to change to song too much!) so that more tracks could fit onto the CD (though not listed as edits in the liner notes).

The band had also written a song called 4 Ever Delayed which had intended to be used for this album but due to time constraints it was withheld and released on Lipstick Traces a year later. Two "newer" songs were included "There By The Grace Of God", which was released as a single and "Door To The River" which had originally been recorded during the Know Your Enemy sessions but had been deemed as unfitting for the album.

The album entered the UK Album Chart at #4 and has sold enough to be awarded Double Platinum status.

I actually quite like this collection despite those dodgy editing issues but I enjoyed Lipstick Traces a lot more mainly because of the second disc of cover versions. The Compilation does contain one of my favourite Manic Street Preachers songs: You Stole The Sun From Heart.

Let The Day Begin...Let The Day Start!