Recommendation: Love’s Sweet Exile, by Manic Street Preachers
Ariel Silvera recommends…
In their early days, the Manics, a welsh alt.rock band, played a lot with androgyny and a critique of oppressive masculinity. In a rock world that was, and still is, heterosexist and binary, the Manics messed around with suggestive videos that show some of them fooling around with each other while wearing gas masks and beautifully applied, heavy make-up. And hey, the lyrics aren’t bad either, about the alienation of all people under capitalism and how that tears us apart from each other.
Some other good songs/videos from that era: Stay Beautiful, Little Baby Nothing, You Love Us.
Posted by xMech on March 5th, 2011 at 08:00 am
Category: music, recommendations 2 comments »
March 5th, 2011 at 1:24 pm |
I agree that yes the Manics did a lot of boundary pushing when it came to gender and sexuality but that wasn’t at all new in the world of alt rock. After all, the genre did pretty much start with The Velvet Undergound and if anyone is looking for a ‘fuck you’ to the gender/sexuality binary… look no further than then them.
For that and so many other examples I’d have to disagree that rock music is hetero sexist (with the exception of radio peddled corporate crap of course, but that’s a given with anything).
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March 5th, 2011 at 9:50 pm |
Thank you very much for introducing me to them. The relationship between Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire is absolutely beautiful, it goes far beyond what is shown in the video. Richey himself is/was practically haunting as an individual. His story gives me chills.
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