Stay Beautiful

In what can only be described as the what-the-actual-fuckery of time passing, 2024 into 2025 marked twenty five years since Manic Millennium.

At the end of 1999, as some were worrying about computers crashing, global security failures and the end of everything as we knew it, 60,000 people waved goodbye to the 20th century in Cardiff's Millennium Stadium. Manic Street Preachers put on the gig, charging just 30 quid for tickets, and it was glorious. [Sidenote: The Masses Against the Classes, the Manics single released at the start of 2000 became the UK's first new entry number one single of the new millennium <3]

I was 16 years old and the gig marked my second trip to Cardiff. Where I was once mortified to be on the DVD, tarting about outside the railings at the soundcheck and shouting 'We're not obsessive at all' to the camera from the queue on the day (they asked what Manics fans are like. I lied. We are obsessive.), I'm now happy that such a formative moment from my youth was captured.

16 yo Manics fan me; 1999

A few years ago in a writing workshop, someone talked about teenage friendship and that was used as a prompt. I wrote about my experience of Manic Millennium and the beauty of teen friendship and fandom...

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Stay Beautiful

By Alex Herod

It was the end of the year, the end of the century, the millennium; time to party like it was 1999 for at least another day or two. They were both sixteen, and laughing at their vivid pink punk vomit, the result of a combination of vodka, fuchsia Barbie biscuits, and a jiggling train.

In the following years, they would rack up the miles between Manchester and Cardiff on pilgrimages for Manic Street Preachers gigs, fan conventions, art exhibitions, and ‘zine meet-ups. But this was only their second trip down and it was going to be really, really special.

Two became three as they met up with another friend similarly fizzing with Lambrini and obsession. A guesthouse had been booked by someone’s mum, covering the first couple of nights (they didn’t worry about the lack of plan for the final night). They were grateful for a place to dump bags and stash snacks, and since the property had a Dyson vacuum in the corridor they squealed and left the landlady a note informing her that Nicky Wire really liked hoovering. 

Three girls, giddy and scrawling B-side lyrics on arms with marker pens, graffitiing t-shirts with nail varnish. They were only going to the pub, but the feather boas and tiaras would mark them out, a mess of eyeliner and spray paint, a unit that grew as they bumped into other glittery gangs around the city, a pool of quicksilver gaining volume and momentum. 

The next 30-odd hours vibrated through and past them. They sang along at the soundcheck and shouted to the photographer, the roadies, and the band through the gates of the stadium. They shared trivia and argued over favourite songs, with boas snaking around multiple necks as they danced. On the morning of the gig, vans full of friends arrived from Manchester and people they’d seen on videos or in fanzines got off coaches from London and Glasgow. They queued from silly-o’clock eating sweets and crisps, and the shops around the stadium sold out of vodka and Babycham by 11.30am. Make-up was re-applied and rips in fishnets adjusted. They were deliberately clichéd and in love with every second of it. 

The gig was thousands of voices and arms in the air and nosebleeds and spilled overpriced pints and scrabbling for setlists at the end. It had been televised at midnight, cyber apocalypse and the millennium bug forgotten, one year moving into the next. Bright lights and smiles and tears of togetherness. They staggered back to the hotel, sweat-stained and grinning, too tired to sleep. 

New Year’s Day arrived and friends departed, addresses exchanged, and promises made of mixtape swaps and trips to each other’s towns. The rain fell and legs hurried under an umbrella canopy stretching across Cardiff. It looked like the Motorcycle Emptiness video so they stayed out and let the downpour soak them. 

As night fell it was just the two of them again, checked out of the guesthouse with a night to kill until the early train home. They had a few pounds left and were all boozed out, so they opted for a cinema trip, cosying under their coats and losing themselves in the gothic steampunk of Sleepy Hollow. They emerged from the cinema into the quiet, hungover lull of a city on the first night of a new year. They had planned to walk around for a couple of hours, find some more obscure Manics fan hotspots to take strange souvenirs from. But the Headless Horseman from the film had followed them out of the screen, and they laughed and screamed, running from imagined hooves galloping on asphalt and shadows rounding corners ahead of them. After scaring themselves silly they decided to bed down for the night in the one place they knew would be open all night and had the bonus of a roof. 

They had never been so excited to see a radiator, it made the women’s toilets in the train station almost welcoming. A few months before they had slept in the same room after a Manics fan convention, during a warmer month but colder night, before Transport for Wales had sorted out the heating. The floor had been littered with bodies, a messy pile of army shirts and fake fur coats. On the first night of the year 2000, they enjoyed the unexpected warmth, peeling off wet shoes and socks and wiggling bare toes. A plastic sign stolen from railings near the gig was propped against the wall so that the faces of the Manics looked out wishing the station ‘Happy New Year’. The last of their change went into the snack machine as the last of the night’s trains left the station. They played a game where they swapped words from song and book titles, and sat and pored over a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode guide, pointing out impossible Manics references in the text, intertwining fandoms and painting patterns in a way only teenage girls can.  

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