Lifeblood is the seventh studio album by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. Recorded in 2003, it was released on 1 November 2004 by record label Sony Music UK. The album was met with generally positive reviews from critics, yielding two singles, "The Love of Richard Nixon" and "Empty Souls". The album peaked at number 13 in the UK Album Chart. Writing and recording The working title of Lifeblood was Litany, hinting that the song "Litany" recorded during the Lifeblood sessions was originally intended for inclusion. The track, however, only featured as a B-side to the "Empty Souls" CD single. The album includes a song about Emily Pankhurst ("Emily"), a leader in the British woman's suffrage movement, but, otherwise, the band's earlier political lyrics have been replaced by personal reflection, such as on the band's past ("1985") and former member Richey Edwards ("Cardiff Afterlife"). Lifeblood was recorded at studios in New York, Wales and Ireland by frequent collaborator Greg Haver, with additional contributions from Tony Visconti and Tom Elmhirst. Two tracks recorded – "Antarctic" and "The Soulmates" – remain only on the Japanese version of the album. The album is a departure musically, replacing the band's traditional guitar walls with more subtle and melodic playing, emphasis instead being given to keyboards and synthesizers. This results in the album being described as pop rock, synthpop, and synthrock sound, something Nicky Wire described the album as "elegiac pop" throughout the recording process. Wire talked about the ghosts that haunted this record and stated that the record was a retrospective: "The main themes are death and solitude and ghosts. Being haunted by history and being haunted by your own past. Sleep is beautiful for me. I hate dreaming because it ruins ten hours of bliss. I had a lot of bad dreams when Richey [Edwards] first disappeared. Not ugly dreams, but nagging things. Until we wrote 'Design for Life', it was six months of misery. Lifeblood doesn't seek to exorcise Edwards' ghost, though, just admits that there are no answers". Nicky Wire reflected on the album in 2021: "Lifeblood is very much a withdrawal album. I was digging deeper holes, to just piss people off - without even trying. There's certain bits of it we do love. But as a man who grew up with the Guinness Book of Hit Records, the fact that album went in at Number 13 just crushed