| "The Beautiful People" | ||||||||
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| Single by Marilyn Manson | ||||||||
| from the album Antichrist Superstar | ||||||||
| Released | January 1997 (Europe and Australia), May 26th 1997 (UK) | |||||||
| Format | 10" / CD single | |||||||
| Recorded | New Orleans, Louisiana, 1996 | |||||||
| Genre | Industrial metal, alternative metal | |||||||
| Length | 3:45 | |||||||
| Label | Nothing/Interscope | |||||||
| Writer(s) | Marilyn Manson, Twiggy Ramirez | |||||||
| Producer | Trent Reznor, Dave Ogilvie, Marilyn Manson | |||||||
| Marilyn Manson singles chronology | ||||||||
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"The Beautiful People" is a song from Marilyn Manson's second full length album, Antichrist Superstar, released as a single in September, 1996. An industrial metal hit written by Marilyn Manson and Twiggy Ramirez, and produced by Trent Reznor, Dave Ogilvie and Manson, its lyrics discuss two major themes: what Manson refers to as "the culture of beauty",[1] and that culture's connection to Friedrich Nietzsche's theory of master-slave morality — the song's "weak ones", who are "always wrong", are oppressed by and exist solely to "justify the strong"; the kratocratic beautiful people whose power is, in a double entendre of phallic and religious implications, "relative to the size of their steeple".
The single peaked at number 26 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and remains known as one of Marilyn Manson's most famous and most successful original songs; in a 2004 review, Richard Banks of the BBC called the track "still the most impressive"[2] in the band's catalogue, and it was ranked in 2006 at number 28 on VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs.[3]
The song is also available as DLC for Guitar Hero 5 and is included in the Rock Band 3 soundtrack.
Contents |
"The Beautiful People" was written in 1994; the lyrics are by Marilyn Manson and the music by Twiggy Ramirez. The original four-track demo version was recorded, in a hotel room while on tour, by Manson, Ramirez, and drummer Ginger Fish. Manson recalled to Kerrang! magazine in May 2005: "It was somewhere in the South, which is ironic. I remember playing the drum beat on the floor and then having my drummer duplicate that on the drum machine. It happened in one day pretty much".[1]
The title of the song comes from Marilyn Bender's 1967 book The Beautiful People,[1] which exposed the world of scandal within the "jet-set" lifestyle of the 1960s, and the culture of beauty as it pertained to fashion and politics. The phrase itself was popularized by Vogue magazine in the early 1960s and was particularly used to describe the Kennedy family, a frequent source of inspiration in Marilyn Manson's work.
The track begins, after a few seconds of backwards-guitar feedback and electronic noise, with an extremely distorted spoken sample; it is Tex Watson declaring "[We would] swoop down on the town. . . [and] kill everyone that wasn't beautiful".[4] This is also said in the beginning of Manson's demo song, "Dune Buggy", except it is not distorted.
The song is written in drop D tuning, and is built primarily out of the notes of a diminished chord, each made into a power chord. It also incorporates extensive use of guitar distortion, and the use of palm muting creates a highly rhythmic, driving style which is amplified by a heavy percussion track. The song's characteristic element is its repetitive drum track, a five-beat common time pattern played on floor toms, in which swung notes create a triplet feel.
Hard rock producer Sean Beavan, a musician with a close connection to jazz guitar, also appears on the track. Beavan, credited with "descending horn guitar", can be heard playing a repeated descending figure using a guitar effect which produces a brass instrument-like tone.
Lyrically, it is intertwined with the Antichrist Superstar album's overarching theme, a semi-narrative examination of the Nietzschean Übermensch.[5] Within this context, "The Beautiful People" deals explicitly with the destructive manifestation of the Will to Power: "There's no time to discriminate", sings Manson, "hate every motherfucker that's in your way". A strong anti-capitalism sentiment stems from exploration of Nietzsche's view of master-slave morality ("It's not your fault that you're always wrong / The weak ones are there to justify the strong") along with its connection to Social Darwinism.[4]
"The Beautiful People" was performed sporadically during the 1995–1996 Smells Like Children tour, frequently in abbreviated form as part of the Portrait of an American Family song "My Monkey". It was "officially" premiered on October 3, 1996, at the State Theatre in Kalamazoo — the second show of the band's Dead to the World Tour.
On September 4, 1997, Marilyn Manson performed the song as the grand finale of the MTV Video Music Awards. Preceded by a marching band playing "Hail to the Chief", Manson entered the stage flanked by mock United States Secret Service agents and, from a microphone-covered podium, delivered a speech[6] to the audience:
| “ | My fellow Americans:
We will no longer be oppressed by the fascism of Christianity! And we will no longer be oppressed by the fascism of beauty. As I see you all sittin' out there trying your hardest not to be ugly, trying your hardest not to fit in, trying your hardest to earn your way into Heaven, but let me ask you: Do you want to be in a place that's filled with a bunch of assholes? |
” |
Manson then threw off his costume, revealing "a leather corset, leather G-string and fishnet stockings", and the band delivered a performance of "The Beautiful People" that Rolling Stone called "riveting",[7] in spite of the magazine's extremely negative review of the program as a whole. As the show closed, host Chris Rock teasingly yelled for the audience to "Run to church right now! Get your asses to church, or you're going to Hell!".[6]
Marilyn Manson and Twiggy Ramirez joined The Smashing Pumpkins at Mountain View, California's Shoreline Amphitheatre for an acoustic performance of "The Beautiful People" during the venue's annual Bridge School Benefit on October 18, 1997.[8] Nine Inch Nails also performed "The Beautiful People", with frontman Trent Reznor on bass guitar and Marilyn Manson on lead vocals, on May 9, 2000 at Madison Square Garden. Manson had been a surprise guest at the concert, appearing unannounced on stage during Nine Inch Nails' "Starfuckers, Inc."[9] Recording of this performance can be found on Nine Inch Nails' live DVD And All That Could Have Been released in 2002.
In live performance, Manson frequently introduces the song with the lyric "How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?" (originally from The Beatles' "Baby, You're a Rich Man") over its instrumental break.[10] It is also the former theme of WWE SmackDown! and was used for WWF Raw is War in 1997, making it the only song to have been used as a theme for both of the WWE's flagship television shows.
In addition to the version on the Antichrist Superstar album and the version on the single (which differ only in the length of the introductory noise) a radio edit also exists, which removes the profanity. The phrase "hate every motherfucker" has been replaced by the alternate lyric "hate every other hater", and the word "shit" has been excised. This radio edit is the version used in the music video for "The Beautiful People".
Three official remixes of "The Beautiful People" have been released. The first, "The Horrible People", was created by Danny Saber and appears on the 1997 Remix & Repent EP; the remix features a fast-tempo drum n bass backing track, and accents the original song's swing jazz-inflected rhythm with brass and piano samples. J. G. Thirlwell's "The Not-So-Beautiful People" is a straight industrial reworking of the track, with rhythmic vocal samples and churning, filtered synthesizers. A different remix of the track was used as the opening theme for WWE SmackDown! from 2001 to 2003 and is available on WWF Forceable Entry as well as a 10-inch picture disc single of the song.
Marilyn Manson's 2004 greatest hits compilation, Lest We Forget, contains a slightly reworked version of the track. The longer introduction from the single version has been restored, and certain musical elements (most notably, an organ-like sound not noticeable in the previously-released versions) have been made more pronounced.
In 1997, MTV News reported that Manson had expressed interest in collaborating with Snoop Dogg to produce a rap version of "The Beautiful People". It is unknown if the collaboration ever actually occurred, although in his September 4, 1997 keynote address at the CMJ Music Marathon, the singer referred to the project as "something I would still love to do"[11] and blamed the hectic touring schedules of both his own band and the rapper for the delay.
Floria Sigismondi directed what has been described as "the creepiest of creepy videos"[12] for "The Beautiful People". The clip, filmed in the abandoned Goodenham and Worts distillery in Toronto, Canada,[13] depicts the band performing the song in a classroom-like area decorated with medical prostheses and laboratory equipment. Intercut with these performance clips are scenes of lead singer Marilyn Manson in a long gown-like costume and aviator goggles, wearing stilts and prosthetic makeup which make him appear bald and grotesquely tall; after being placed in this costume by similarly-attired attendants, he appears to a cheering crowd through a window in a scene reminiscent of a fascist rally, and later stands in the center of a circle while people crowd around him riot. Other fast cut scenes include extreme close-ups of crawling earthworms, mannequin heads and hands, and the boots of people marching; and shots of the individual band members bizarrely costumed, including Manson in black and neck braces and an apparent dental device which pulls the flesh of his mouth with hooks, exposing metallic teeth.
The video premiered on MTV on September 22, 1996 and was nominated for two 1997 MTV Video Music Awards: Best Rock Video and Best Special Effects.[14]
The single was generally praised on its release. "With its mock menace and pummeling metal triplets", wrote Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic, "it was the first Manson song with an oversized hook — the kind of song that even the group's detractors couldn't get out of their heads".[15] In its 1996 review of Antichrist Superstar, Rolling Stone magazine described "The Beautiful People" as "suspense-filled", with "a zombielike, repetitive quality [and] ghostly electronic sounds. . .", adding that in his vocal delivery, "Manson hisses his lines, punctuating certain words with a shrill, insane pitch, others with a retching scream".[16]
In the United States, the single managed to reach number 29 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and number 26 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart.[17] In the UK, it reached number 18 on the UK Singles Chart, peaking on June 7, 1997.[18] The song is also used as plate appearance music for Jim Thome of the Minnesota Twins. A portion of the song is used as the Boston Bruins skate onto the ice at the beginning of a home game. The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Chicago Blackhawks similarly sample the song's opening portion. The song was named the 86th "best hard rock song of all time" by VH1.[19]
According to Acclaimedmusic.net "The Beautiful People" is the 38th best song of 1996, the 471st greatest song released during the 1990s and the 2853rd greatest of all-time.[20] In 2002, Kerrang! ranked "The Beautiful People" 5th in their 100 Greatest Singles of All Time.[21] In 2003, Q ranked "The Beautiful People" 192nd in their The 1001 Best Songs Ever.[22] Q also included "The Beautiful People" under the Metal Tracks category of their Ultimate Music Collection in 2005.[23] The music video for the single would be nominated in three categories at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards namely, Best Rock Video, Best Art Direction and Best Special Effects [14]
The song has been covered by various artists, including the jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie, on his Brass Fantasy's 1999 Odyssey of Funk & Popular Music, Volume 1; metalcore band Eighteen Visions, on the 2006 compilation Punk Goes 90s, the Scala & Kolacny Brothers girls' choir on their 2007 album One Winged Angel, and heavy metal band Soulfly on a compilation for Kerrang! magazine—later the song was included in the special edition of the band's sixth studio album Conquer.[24]
Christina Aguilera sang her version (with total change of lyrics and background, including piano and other elements) of the song for the Burlesque soundtrack. Apathy sampled the song and rapped over it in a song by the same name.
Although not technically a cover, a variation of "The Beautiful People" became the entrance theme of WCW professional wrestler Saturn in the late 1990s. This corresponded with his gimmick of strange goth and transvestite characteristics similar to Marilyn Manson.
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As original version, with
As original version, with