Watch Manic Street Preachers cover Madonna's 1984 single Borderline

Manics Madonna
(Image credit: MSP - Tristan Fewings/Disasters Emergency Committee/Getty Images for Livewire Pictures Ltd: Madonna - Michael Putland/Getty Images)

Manic Street Preachers kicked off the BBC 6 Music festival in Cardiff last night, March 31, and treated fans to a cover of Madonna's 1984 single Borderline.

The Welsh trio were playing an intimate show at Clwb Ifor Bach to launch the festival, which is also set to feature performances from Pixies, IDLES, Wet Leg, beabadoobee and more across the weekend, April 1-3. 

Watch the performance of Borderline below:

During the band's 16-song set, frontman James Dean Bradfield dedicated the song Blank Diary Entry to the late Mark Lanegan, the singer having guested on the studio version of the track, which featured on the group's The Ultra Vivid Lament album, released last year.

The setlist for the show ran as follows:

Motorcycle Emptiness
From Despair To Where
His Last Painting
You Stole The Sun From My Heart
Still Snowing in Sapporo
Year Of Purification
Your Love Alone Is Not Enough
Everything Must Go
Blank Diary Entry
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next
Methadone Pretty’
The Secret He Had Missed
Spectators Of Suicide
Borderline
You Love Us
A Design For Life

The band are set to support The Killers on the American band's upcoming tour.

Paul Brannigan
Contributing Editor, Louder

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.