Journal for Plague Lovers Journal for Plague Lovers Journal for Plague Lovers is the ninth studio album by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers, released in May 2009 by record label Columbia. Recorded between October 2008 and February 2009 and produced by Steve Albini and Dave Eringa, it features exclusively posthumous-published lyrics by Richey Edwards, who disappeared on 1 February 1995 and was presumed deceased in 2008. It is the only Manic Street Preachers album in which the lyrics for every song were written solely by Edwards. The album received a very positive critical reception and debuted at number 3 in the UK
Manic Street Preachers as the opening track on "Forever Delayed", the band's greatest hits album released in November 2002. Much later on, interviewed in 2014 by "NME" for their "Song Stories" video series, singer/guitarist James Dean Bradfield recalled that the lyric had been a fusion of two sets of lyrics-"Design for Life" and "Pure Motive"-sent to him from Wales by bassist Nicky Wire, while he was living in Shepherd's Bush. The music was written "in about ten minutes" and Bradfield felt a sense of euphoria with the result. The song was credited with having "rescued the band" from the despair felt after the