"Roses in the Hospital" was the third single taken from the Manic Street Preachers' second album, Gold Against the Soul. It was released in September 1993.
Reaching #15 in the UK charts, it would prove to be the highest charting single from any of the group's first three albums (their cover of "Suicide Is Painless (Theme from M*A*S*H)" had reached #7 the previous year, but it was not featured on any album). Sales of the single were helped by the band's appearance supporting Bon Jovi at the Milton Keynes Bowl on 18 August 1993.
The line "we don't want your fucking love" was excised from the radio edit of the song, being replaced by a reiteration of the title. The song's closing refrain of "Forever, ever delayed" would eventually give rise to the title for the band's greatest hits compilation (Forever Delayed), an album on which "Roses in the Hospital" itself would not actually make an appearance.
At the end of the song James Dean Bradfield can also be heard singing the line "Rudi gonna fail", a reference to "Rudie Can't Fail", a song by The Clash from their seminal album London Calling. The Manics have cited The Clash as one of the key influences on their sound.
Famous quotes containing the words roses in, roses and/or hospital:
“O night,
you take the petals
of the roses in your hand,
but leave the stark core
of the rose
to perish on the branch.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Keep not your roses for my dead, cold brow
The way is lonely, let me feel them now.”
—Arabella Smith (1844–1916)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)