This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours
This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours is the fifth studio album by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. It was released on 14 September 1998 by record label Epic. Like its 1996 predecessor Everything Must Go, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours was a commercial and critical success. The album debuted at number 1 in the UK Albums Chart, selling 136,000 copies, going Gold in the first week. It sold well in the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia, and represented a change in the sound from the furious alternative rock sound to a more melodic and tender approach. By March 1999 the album was Triple Platinum in the UK alone and since its release it has sold more than five million copies worldwide. It earned the band further nominations and accolades at the BRIT Awards in 1999. This is their first album whose lyrics were solely written by bassist Nicky Wire; their previous album still had songs that featured lyrics contributed by the late rhythm guitarist Richey Edwards. Music and lyrics The title is a quotation taken from a speech given by Aneurin Bevan, a Labour Party politician from Wales. Its working title was simply Manic Street Preachers. The cover photograph was taken on Black Rock Sands near Porthmadog, Wales. It was the first Manics album to feature lyrics solely by Nicky Wire, while all the music was written by the duo of James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore. This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours shows considerably less hard rock influence than their previous efforts and finds the band experimenting with sound and production techniques. It features cleaner guitar sounds in general and the increased use of additional instrumentation such as strings, keyboards and both real and programmed percussion. Clash magazine described the album's sound as "a glacial distillation of the anthemic rock that had served them so well two years previous", an approach further developed on 2004's Lifeblood. In an interview Dave Eringa admitted that: "James was piling on the pressure at the time. He's got this idea that I work best under pressure; it's about putting me under as much as he can all the time!". After recording "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next", he also said that the song went through a four-month gestation period. Eringa said that even in the week of release he was nervous: "You get midweek chart positions and sales figures all week, and it was my first chance of a possible Number One, which is such an exciting thing. Every day it was just getting worse and worse; I was becoming more and more psychotic. If it had been released the same week as a Nirvana record or an Oasis record, you'd just have to put your hands up and say 'c'est la vie' – but the horror of losing out to Steps would have been unbelievable!". James Dean Bradfield has cited John Frusciante as the main influence for the intro riff of "My Little