This song, whose title translates as 'Europe Passes Through Me,' is a duet with German actress Nina Hoss.
The track was recorded in Berlin's Hansa studios with producer Alex Silva, who previously collaborated with the Manics on 1994's The Holy Bible. Silva is the partner of Nina Hoss.
Manic Street Preachers previewed the song during their Spring 2014 UK tour.
The song was originally titled "European Miracle."
The song lifts its opening line ("Europe had a language problem") from "I Travel," the first track on Simple Minds' 1980 Empires and Dance album.
The Scottish New Wave band were an important influence on Futurology. "I always wanted to make something I thought could live up to the best tracks of albums two, three and four by Simple Minds," vocalist James Dean Bradfield told The Guardian with a self-conscious laugh. "Your love of something is the hardest thing to transfer sometimes. It's like having a parent: you recognise them in you, the older you get. I just kept thinking, 'this has got to come out in the wash.' And it finally did."
James Dean Bradfield told Mojo magazine that when he was writing the song's music he was guided by the mood of Nicky Wire's lyrics. "Europa Geht Durch Mich marches to its own logic, " he said. "you have to go with it. Strap on the Teflon and bash the f--- out of it! I was confronted by the presence of the words, which made the music confrontational."
This ode to "an old jaded Commie" who's "the biggest living hypocrite you'll ever see" is in fact a self-referential jab at The Manics' own leftist history and legacy. It includes the lyrics:
So you played in Cuba did you like it brother? I bet you felt proud you silly little fu--er.
In 2001 the Manics became the first popular Western rock band to play in Cuba. Their concert and trip to the island was documented and then released as a DVD entitled Louder Than War.
The song features keyboards by Cian Ciarán, a Welsh musician best known as the keyboard player in the band Super Furry Animals. He also contributed to Futurology's title track.
This is an instrumental evocation of the story of John Hughes, the Welsh entrepreneur who in 1869 founded the Ukrainian industrial city of Donetsk. The city was originally named Hughesovka after Hughes.
