Manic Street Preachers have scored their first UK Number One album in 23 years after a heated chart battle with Steps.
As revealed in the midweek charts, the rock band were battling the ’90s pop act to displace Drake from the top of the charts after the rapper scored the top spot last week with his latest album ‘Certified Lover Boy’.
It’s now been revealed that the Manics registered 27,000 chart sales with acclaimed 14th studio album ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’, with 91 per cent of these coming from physical copies including 6,300 on vinyl. They beat Steps by 2,000 chart sales.
“It’s amazing to be back at Number 1 after 23 years,” the Welsh band said of the accolade. “It was a titanic chart battle and we are absolutely over the moon. Thanks to all our fans, supporters and Sony for keeping the faith.”
This marks the band’s first Number One album since 1998’s ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours’. Their albums ‘Send Away The Tigers’ [2007], ‘Futurology’ [2014], and ‘Resistance Is Futile’ [2018] all narrowly missed out and came in at Number Two, while all of their other albums this side of the millennium landed in the Top Five apart from 2004’s ‘Lifeblood’.
Elsewhere in the charts, Drake dropped to Number Three with ‘Certified Lover Boy’, while other new entries in the Top Five include The Stranglers with ‘Dark Matters’ (four), and The Vaccines, whose fifth album ‘Back In Love City’ squeezes into the Top Five.
Arlo Parks has also re-entered the Top 40 with debut album ‘Collapsed In Sunbeams’, which climbs to 36 after she won the 2021 Mercury Prize last week.
Reviewing Manic Street Preachers’ chart-topping ‘The Ultra Vivid Lament’, NME wrote: The record has its flaws – the odd misguided lyric, the occasional slip into by-numbers pop melodies – but there’s plenty of space for those mistakes to be made.
“‘Orwellian’’s clunky lambast of the modern world (“We live in Orwellian times / It feels impossible to pick a side”), for instance, is rescued by its gloriously melodramatic instrumental. In the end, they are minor bumps in a record of intense beauty, among the best of the Manics’ records this century.”
Meanwhile, the band also recently told NME about what to expect from the upcoming 20th anniversary reissue of their divisive 2001 album ‘Know Your Enemy’, as well as bassist and lyricist Nicky Wire‘s “jazz-meets-C86 solo album.
The Manics will be touring through to December. Visit here for tickets and information.
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