Show Me The Wonder

Album: Rewind The Film (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the first single from Rewind the Film, the eleventh studio album by the Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. The LP was recorded in the Manics' Faster studio in Cardiff, Rockfield Studios in Monmouthshire, and Hansa Studios in Berlin.
  • This was the first single to be released by the MSPs without James Dean Bradfield's electric guitar on it.
  • The song features Manic's drummer Sean Moore on trumpet. James Dean Bradfield told NME his trumpet work drove Rewind The Film to a "beautiful, bucolic, soulful place."
  • The lyric "Is heaven a place where nothing ever happens?" was borrowed from Talking Heads' 1979 track "Heaven."
  • Craig Roberts stars in the song's music video, which features the Manics performing live in an old-fashioned working man's pub. The Welsh actor is best known for playing the lead role of Oliver Tate in the movie Submarine and the character Rio in the television series The Story of Tracy Beaker.
  • Bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire described this to The Quietus as, "the one uplifting song on the album." He explained: "Just that celebration, the idea that we're sick of the opposing forces of science and religion trying to prove truth. We just wanted to wallow in the magic of how something you see, a song, how certain things work, how certain individuals are unexplainable, a good haircut, the way a drummer will react to a guitar, the way a footballer will be truly stunning without even trying - science or religion just cannot explain certain things."
  • The Manics were listening to a lot of 70s Elvis when they recorded this song. He told The Quietus: "The horns are from our Mums and Dads' record collection, 'Suspicious Minds', 'I Just Can't Help Believing'- it gives me a lift every time I hear it."
  • The music clip was directed by Kieran Evans and won the prize for best video at the 2013 Q Awards. James Dean Bradfield told Q magazine: "It's brilliant to find someone again like Kieran Evans, who is a good West Wales boy. It's really gratifying to find someone who understands our world and can articulate it better than we can in a visual sense."

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