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“A Design for Life” was released by Manic Street Preachers in 1996 and was the first single release from the Everything Must Go album of May that same year. The title was inspired by the Joy Division EP record “An Ideal for Living”. The opening line ‘Libraries gave us power’ was inspired by the legend above the entrance to the former Pillgwenlly Library in Newport, near the band’s home town of Blackwood in Wales: ‘Knowledge is Power’, whilst the phrase ‘then work came and made us free’ references the German slogan Arbeit macht frei that featured above the gates of most of the Nazi concentration camps and which was earlier referenced by the band on “The Intense Humming of Evil” from The Holy Bible. It reached number two in the UK charts on 27 April 1996 and was... Read on...