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"Motorcycle Emptiness" is a song by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers from their debut album, Generation Terrorists. It was released as a single on 1 June 1992 by record label Columbia and reached number 17 in the UK Singles Chart on 13 June 1992.
The track is inspired by S.E. Hinton's book Rumble Fish, about biker gang culture. According to the band, the lyrics are an attack on the hollowness of a lifestyle centered around the consumerism which is offered by capitalism, describing how society expects young people to conform. The line "From feudal serf to spender" draws a direct parallel between slavery of peasants to the lord of their manor under the Feudal system in medieval times and the brand loyalty of people in modern capitalist societies, which the companies use to their advantage in pursuit of profit.
The song was derived from the early Manic Street Preachers songs "Go, Buzz Baby, Go" (with which it shares the chord structure and the phrase "Motorcycle Emptiness" late in the song over the verse chords) and "Behave Yourself Baby", a rough demo with a similar structure, that has the lines "All we want from you is the skin you live within", similar to "All we want from you are the kicks you've given us" in this song.
Some of the lyrics are taken from the poem "Neon Loneliness" (the first line of the chorus, "Under neon loneliness", is a direct lift) by Welsh poet Patrick Jones, the brother of Manics bass guitarist and lyricist Nicky Wire. "Motorcycle Emptiness" was also included on Forever Delayed, the Manics' greatest hits album, in October 2002, and released as a reissued single from the compilation in February 2003.
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