Another Richey lyric, accompanied by a semi-acoustic performance which was recorded in one take and heavily influenced by Nirvana’s ‘Unplugged In New York.’

The lyric was written around 1993, but the band were unable to find music to match the lyric until 1996. Along with “Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky”, it’s one of the darker moments on “Everything Must Go,” with Richey talking about the transitory nature of human life & how, in the greater scheme of things, individually we mean very little. It’s a grim thought for anyone with more than just a modicum of ego, but it is of course brutal fact if you look at it – humans are just another species on a planet that’s billions of years old.

“The only people that matter are Newtons and Einsteins, they’re the only things that count… at least they can make some kind of statement to the world, that they are above nature, because I think that if you can beat nature you’re worthy. If you can’t you’re just another dying thing.” Richey, Sheffield Local Radio, 1994.

In true Richey style the idea is also related to the worthlessness of modern life – a theme the band addressed in other lyrics from the Gold Against The Soul era.

“There’s a poem by Tennessee Williams called ‘Lament For Moths’, one of the first poems we ever read, which is about how the moths, the sensitive people, will always be stamped on and crushed by the mammoths – that really hit us, the sudden realisation that we were the moths of the world.” Nicky, 1994.

On a lighter note, it features one of the best known examples of a misheard Manics lyric – “A bronze moth dies easily”, or… “I bronze my thighs easily” as it always sounds when I listen to the song. James’ deliberate pronunciation on some later songs makes you think that he was all too aware of the joke about misheard Manics lyrics; for instance he appears to have been very careful on ‘To Repel Ghosts’ to prevent people from thinking that he was singing about fighting off goats.