Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's leisured travelers to examine "the face of a country by the rules of picturesque beauty". Picturesque, along with the aesthetic and cultural strands of Gothic and Celticism^{[disambiguation needed ]}, was a part of the emerging Romantic sensibility of the 18th century.

The term "picturesque" needs to be explained in terms of its relationship to two other aesthetic ideals: those of the beautiful and the sublime. By the last third of the 18th century, Enlightenment rationalist ideas about aestheticism were being challenged by looking at the experiences of beauty and sublimity as being non-rational (instinctual). Aesthetic experience was not just a rational decision - one did not look at a pleasing curved form and decide it was beautiful - rather it was a matter of basic human instinct and came naturally. Edmund Burke in his 1757 Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful said the soft gentle curves appealed, he thought, to the male sexual desire, while the sublime horrors appealed to our desires for self-preservation. Picturesque arose as a mediator between the opposed ideals of beauty and the sublime, showing the possibilities that existed in between these two rationally idealized states. As Thomas Gray wrote in 1765 of the Scottish Highlands "The mountains are ecstatic.. None but.. God know how to join so much beauty with so much horror." See also Gilpin and the picturesque.

Manic Street Preachers are a Welsh alternative rock band formed in 1986 consisting of James Dean Bradfield (lead vocals, lead guitar), Nicky Wire (bass, lyrics), and Sean Moore (drums, percussion). The band is part of the Cardiff music scene and were at their most prominent during the 1990s. They are colloquially known as "The Manics" or simply "Manics". Manic Street Preachers were originally a quartet but primary lyricist and rhythm guitarist Richey Edwards vanished on 1 February 1995.

In 1992, the Manics released their debut album, Generation Terrorists. Their combination of androgynous glam punk imagery and critical social lyrics about "culture, alienation, boredom, and despair" soon gained them a loyal following and cult status. The band's later albums retained a leftist politicisation and intellectual lyrical style while adopting a broader alternative rock sound.

Following Edwards' disappearance, Bradfield, Moore, and Wire persisted with Manic Street Preachers and went on to gain critical and commercial success, becoming one of Britain's premier rock bands. Altogether, they have garnered eight Top 10 albums, fifteen Top 10 singles, and have reached number one three times with their 1998 This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours album, the 1998 "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" single, and the 2000 "The Masses Against the Classes" single.