Manic Street Preachers - 4st. 7lbs. Lyrics

Beauty in horror

Listening to this and singing along at 3am while not eaten anything for 3 days is literally my mood rn

For real. This is a vibe

This song is so hard to listen to but so beautiful at the same time

Manic Street preachers Is so deep!!

5 years after the beginning of all my anorexia story and currently relapsing, listening to it. This song’s definitely a fucking trigger.
Cheers.

The change in time signature is so melancholy.

Well this is cheery

"4st. 7lbs."

I eat too much to die
And not enough to stay alive
I'm sitting in the middle waiting

Days since I last pissed
Cheeks sunken and despaired
So gorgeous sunk to six stone
Lose my only remaining home

See my third rib appear
A week later all my flesh disappears
Stretching taut, cling-film on bone
I'm getting better

Karen says I've reached my target weight
Kate and Emma and Kristin know it's fake
Problem is diet's not a big enough word
I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view

I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity

Stomach collapsed at five
Lift up my skirt my sex is gone
Naked and lovely and 5st. 2
May I bud and never flower

My vision's getting blurred
But I can see my ribs and I feel fine
My hands are trembling stalks
And I can feel my breasts are sinking

Mother trys to choke me with roast beef
And sits savouring her sole Ryvita
That's the way you're built my father said
But I can change, my cocoon shedding

I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity

Kate and Kristin and Kit Kat
All things I like looking at
Too weak to fuss, too weak to die
Choice is skeletal in everybody's life

I choose my choice, I starve to frenzy
Hunger soon passes and sickness soon tires
Legs bend, stockinged I am Twiggy
And I don't mind the horror that surrounds me

Self-worth scatters, self-esteem's a bore
I long since moved to a higher plateau
This discipline's so rare so please applaud
Just look at the fat scum who pamper me so

Yeh 4st. 7, an epilogue of youth
Such beautiful dignity in self-abuse
I've finally come to understand life
Through staring blankly at my navel

Swear this entire record gets better with age and I've never really gone beyond it. Generation Terrorists and The Holy Bible are all I need when it comes to the Manics.....

BETTER THAN WHAT

I think up to Everything Must Go for me!

The first half of this song is probably my least favourite part on The Holy Bible, but 3:19 onwards is one of my favourite parts.

3:16 Serene and chilling at the same time. Genius songwriting.

Just the most extraordinary lyric, and imagine the task James and Sean had putting music to it. I bought this album in 96, and have been in awe of it and particularly tracks like this ever since. To think that the nation was going crazy over the mediocrity of bands like Oasis at the time just astounds me even now. This song was and still is truly on the edge.

stuart johnson I think you should have picked a mediocre band to prove your point 😂😂😂

Oasis was not mediocre, they just had a whole different style... not so complex lyrics but good tunes anyway.

mediocre compared with the Manics

I actully thought about the walking upon snow-thing when I was anorexic... I always checked my footprints in the sand/mud to see how deep they were. Sick? Yes!
And the words "I long since moved to a higher plateau, this discipline's so rare so please applaud" really hit me in the chest. Yup, that was me. So me. But I'm recovered now.

I'm glad you're doing better. :) I hung out with a girl named Alexis when I was little who became Anorexic when she was still a child. I didn't know her by that point, but I've wondered about her life and what happened to her as an adult.

well done!!!!!

people on pro-ana always glorifying this song. pretty sure that's not what richey initially intended.
depressingly realistic and difficult lyrics. i sometimes wish the music was as good as the songwriting, but alas... 3:20 is definitely the highlight of the album for me. they didn't do enough melodic breakdowns as the one seen here.

@Zaragoga
Yeah the lyrics are dark. Then again this is art and not science. Edwards was obviously pathologically mentally handicapped, is what science has to say. That is: Do not take his art as a benchmark for what to feel or adhere to. Then again, there needs to be ambiguity in art to make it meaningful. If the message of the song was clearly: "don't do this shit", it would be stopping to be good art, and become bad art, such as Britney Spears or ABBA.

The choice is with you, and everyone what to make of it, since there are no scientific theories of poetry yet that nail once and for all: "yes it is about this, and says this".

Parched Pinemarten lol how you can say that? Like if they chose the illness. Is it selfish to be anorexic? Is it selfish to have cancer?

equating anorexia to cancer is where you went wrong. you have the free will to get better with anorexia, but not with cancer.

@Parched Pinemarten not completely! They are both serious illnesses that can only be cured by treatment and in some cases they can't. Yes you are right those who suffer with an eating disorder have to be willing to get better but it's not so easy!

The most triggering ad played just before this song....

Google needs to sort its shit out imo, I always get ads for Garcinia

+Stoned Crow when you have an eating disorder, anything can trigger the thoughts that come with it. that's what they mean (although i understand the more widely known "definition" now is just offended, but it's not like that!)

@Stoned Crow its not triggering as in angering. Its triggering in the sense of making the voice worse, the thoughts worse, etc.

@Stoned Crow it's a clinical term in this context. It doesnt mean 'saddened' or 'offended' or 'hurt'. It means 'triggers clinical symptoms'. I have a diagnosis of PTSD and I wish the term 'trigger' hadn't been stolen and bastardised in social media. It's supposed to mean something clinical.

The song that pushed me to the dumps of my eating disorder.

Really? I can imagine that it could have the opposite effect in showing how bad eating disorders really are.

If what you say is true though, I would classify this music as "dangerous" and say that the "Parental Advisory" sticker is fully justified on this product.

logicalempiricist The thing is, everything could be a trigger. It's only depend on what's trigger you. This song could create a relapse to a person and motivate a other to recover. Just like all others songs (about ED or not). So we will need classify a lot song as dangerous ?

This was one of my go-to ana songs as well.

my tonight's tune.

At 3:20 the Preachers went full slowcore

absolutely love this song

4st 7lbs,that's a whopping baby!