I’ve been hearing a lot of that New Manic Street Preachers single recently, featuring Nina Persson of the Cardigans. It’s not bad, but I’ve heard it all before, and the Manics to me these days are about as relevant as the NME. To these ears it sounds a bit like ‘Little Baby Nothing’ which the band at the time wanted Kylie Minogue to sing on but had to settle for porn star Traci Lords cos Kylie’s ‘people’ had never heard of them. Actually. D’you know what? The new single is bad. It’s really bad. It’s stinkingly bad. It’s boring and repetitive aural wallpaper. Charlotte Church made it sound even worse when she duetted with the band on her teevee show the other week. I won’t be buying it, and while I’m sure there is still a hardcore of Manics fans somewhere, I can’t think of any 20 year olds who’d buy it instead of the latest Muse or Biffy Clyro offering.
But Nina Persson. Raaaaaarrrr. (That’s a cat noise by the way.) Great voice, great face, great rock/pop star. I loved the Cardigan’s ‘For What it’s Worth’. I thought it was the best single never to make number 1. About a year ago, during a hiatus from the Cardigans she acted in a Swedish black and white movie, ‘Om Gud Vill’. You might just have caught it down at your local Odeon. If you did, you would have heard her singing a fantastic version of the White Stripes ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground’. It’s not much different to the version you are familiar with, but I liked it so much I included it on my Best Of The Year CD that I swap with my friends in our Christmas cards every year. Nerds? Trainspotters? Sad? Yep. Here‘s the cover. And here’s another gratuitous picture of Nina for you.
Plain Or Pan 