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Vox pop: Welsh bands feature poorly in NME list

Welsh bands account for just three of the top tracks of the past decade and a half, according to a leading music magazine.

NME's writers largely ignored Welsh artists in a recent list of great songs

In a recent feature, writers from NME selected their “best 150 tracks of the last 15 years”.

In a list littered with international hits, only three are by Welsh bands: at 150 Manic Street Preachers’Australia, at 75 the Manics’ A Design For Life and at 66 Super Furry Animals’ The Man Don’t Give a Fuck.

Graf Middleton, of Cardiff’s Spillers Records, feels that it’s not a fair reflection of the diversity of the Welsh music scene, and points to the abundance of Welsh-language songs.

Of the list’s top-ranking Welsh song he said, “Even Super Furries have got better songs than that, and there’s plenty of other great songs around… but the ones that get remembered, maybe they’re the ones with the most swear words in”.