“Stay Beautiful” by Manic Street Preachers

"Stay Beautiful" was the Manic Street Preachers' opening shot from their debut album, Generation Terrorists, released by Columbia in July 1991, and it even carried the album's name as a working title. Steve Brown produced it; James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore wrote the music, Richey James Edwards and Nicky Wire the words. It's the Welsh band at their brattiest, and Drowned in Sound's Marc Burrows counted it among their purest punk records, nearer to their earlier indie-label releases than to the album around it.

The chorus originally ended on an obscene brush-off. The released take bites its tongue and drops a guitar fill into the gap, and fans still bellow the missing words when the band dusts it off live. It was their first UK top-40 single, scraping in at 40 in August 1991; a reissue six years later stalled at 52.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.