Music / Marilyn Manson

Influences:

• David Bowie, KISS, Big Black, New York Dolls, Arthur Brown, Alice Cooper, The Doors, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, The Cure, Bauhaus, The Beatles, Madonna, Prince, White Zombie, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, N.W.A, Ministry, Led Zeppelin, Muddy Waters

Influenced:

• Eminem, Twiztid, Motionless in White, Black Veil Brides, Lady Gaga, Davey Suicide, Lil Uzi Vert

"I am the God of Fuck!"

— "Cake and Sodomy"

Marilyn Manson (initially Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids) is an American rock band founded in 1989. Most of their early music technically falls under Industrial Rock, but they have since embraced influences from a variety of rock subgenres including goth and glam.

The band are without a doubt best known from the image of them conjured by the public at the height of their popularity in the 1990s, including the recurring summary of their work as "Shock Rock" (a label they resented, as they felt they never were trying to be shocking, but just doing what they wanted). Their graphic imagery and conceptual basis in critiquing and satirizing mainstream American media won them a reputation of a kind seldom seen before in music, to the tune of protests and petitions to cancel performances alongside states passing legislation to ban the group from performing at state-owned venues. In fact, the moral panic against them was so great that they were blamed for the Columbine massacre by sections of the media under the belief that the killers had been inspired by their music.^note Ironically, the killers hated them and saw them as sell-outs, and were fans of KMFDM and Rammstein instead.

On the surface, this seems like an easy mistake to make. Throughout their career, Marilyn Manson have made good use of explicit live shows, controversial lyrics and outright bizarre music videos. The songs are cynical, with many lampooning topics such as religion, conformism and social hierarchy. Nothing was off-limits, including certain members of the band's own fanbase. Despite this, several of the songs and most of the videos don't give their meaning up easily, and are open to multiple interpretations.

Due to the fact that the band name is also the lead singer's stage name, Marilyn Manson is one of the most notorious examples of I Am the Band in existence. Many people are not, in fact, aware that they are a band, and credit all the group's music to the singer alone. The number of former band members doesn't help — Marilyn Manson's lineup changes almost constantly, and they have gone through 17 guitarists, bassists, drummers and keyboardists in just 20 years.

Members:

Current:

• Marilyn Manson (Brian Warner) – lead vocals
• Paul Wiley – guitars, backing vocals
• Juan Alderete – bass, backing vocals

Former:

• Ginger Fish (Ken Wilson) - drums, percussion, piano
• Mark Chaussee - guitars (touring)
• Rob Holliday - bass, guitars (touring)
• Wes Borland - guitars (touring)
• Zsa Zsa Speck (Perry Pandrea) - keyboards
• Olivia Newton Bundy (Brian Tutunick) - bass
• Gidget Gein (Brad Stewart) (deceased) - bass
• Twiggy Ramirez (Jeordie White) - bass, occasional backing vocals at live shows
• Sara Lee Lucas (Frederick Streithorst) - drums, percussion
• Daisy Berkowitz (Scott Putesky) (deceased) - guitars
• Zim Zum (Tim Linton) - guitars
• John 5 (John Lowery) - guitars
• Madonna Wayne Gacy (Stephen Bier) - keyboards
• Tim Skold - guitars, bass
• Chris Vrenna - keyboards, percussion
• Jason Sutter - drums (touring)
• Andy Gerold - bass (touring)
• Fred Sablan - bass (touring)
• Spencer Rollins - keyboards (touring)
• Daniel Fox - keyboards, percussion
• Tyler Bates – lead guitar, backing vocals
• Gil Sharone – drums
• Brandon Pertzborn - Drums

Discography:

• Portrait of an American Family (1994)
• Smells Like Children (1995) (EP)
• Antichrist Superstar (1996)
• Remix & Repent (1997) (EP)
• Mechanical Animals (1998)
• Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) (2000)
• The Golden Age of Grotesque (2003)
• Eat Me, Drink Me (2007)
• The High End of Low (2009)
• Born Villain (2012)
• The Pale Emperor (2015)
• Heaven Upside Down (2017)
• We Are Chaos (2020)

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"I don't like the tropes, but the tropes like me":

• Aerith and Bob: In recent years, new members have not chosen stage names whilst the old members have kept theirs. The results of this are... Interesting...
• Alice Allusion: The album Eat Me, Drink Me, whose name refers to the drinks and foods that Alice would consume to change her size while in Wonderland. Manson even referred to the album as "his version of Alice in Wonderland".
• Audience Participation Song: "Antichrist Superstar" and "This is the New Shit" are intentionally designed as these.
• Auto-Tune: A vocoder is used to terrifying effect in the outro of "Cryptorchid" and the chorus of "Kinderfeld."
• Batman Gambit:
  • The cover for Portrait of an American Family was originally intended to be a picture of a naked child (a five year old Manson himself — the photo was taken by his parents in a non-sexual context, and his genitals weren't showing in the photo,) to show that an innocent photo can and will be interpreted as "pornographic." In itself this would have been an effective statement; however the proposed cover scared the record label about accusations of child pornography, and was thus not used. The censorship of the image only proved the point the band was trying to make, rather than diminishing it.
  • Similarly, the cover for Holy Wood depicts a violent and bloody image of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and was thus censored by the band's label in certain markets. It was originally designed to show how violent the popular scene actually is, and the act of censoring only further emphasized the violent nature of the religious parable.
• Blasphemous Boast: "The Fight Song" from Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death):
  I'm not a slave / to a God that doesn't exist!
• Bishōnen Line: Over the course of Antichrist Superstar The Worm went through a metamorphosis from a weird worm-human hybrid◊ to possibly a mothman into finally an evil angel◊.
• Blackface: Taken up to eleven in the video for "Sweet Dreams" where Manson's entire body is painted black while he rides a pig.
• Bookends:
  • Counting the hidden track, the two distorted "when you are suffering, know that I've betrayed you" samples at the start and end make Antichrist Superstar a perfect loop almost of the The Wall variety.
  • Holy Wood begins and ends with a gun (specifically, a revolver) being cocked and dry-fired.
• Byronic Hero: The protagonists of each album in Manson's Triptych are implied to be this (assuming that they're all different people).
• Call-Back: Used all the time. For example, in 1996, there is the lyric "Anti-things I fucked and ate." In Arma-Goddamn-Motherfuckin-Geddon, "First you try to fuck it, then you try to eat it, and if it hasn't learned your name you better kill it before they see it." In Heart-Shaped Glasses, "That blue is getting me high and making me low." The next album was The High End of Low. In If I Was Your Vampire, "6 a.m. Christmas morning. No shadows, no reflections here." Then, two albums later, there is the Grammy-nominated song No Reflection. Manson is also known to re-use lyrics from pre-Portrait songs, like "Are all your infants in abortion cribs?"
  • The Pale Emperor continues this fine tradition with the song "Deep Six," in the most roundabout, ultra-trolling way possible. The song references the book "The Age of Manipulation: The Con in Confidence, The Sin in Sincere". After reading the book, which came out in 1989, the year the band was formed, it's been determined by the fandom that the book pretty much is the foundation of much of Manson's beliefs, especially since other songs, "Target Audience (Narcissus Narcosis)" from Holy Wood and, most importantly, "The Beautiful People" from Antichrist Superstar, got their titles from passages in it.
• Caps Lock: For some unknown reason, titles of some songs on Heaven Upside Down are written in all caps, such as "WE KNOW WHERE YOU FUCKING LIVE", "SAY10" or "KILL4ME".
  • All the songs on We Are Chaos are also written in all caps.
• Careful with That Axe: "Antichrist Superstar".
  • "1996" as well. "Light a candle for the sinners... Set the world on fire. Hahahahahaaaa... YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOW!
  • The entire second half of "Para-noir".
  "I don't need a reason to hate you the way I... DOOOOO!!!"
  • "Hey, Cruel World..."
  • "Irresponsible Hate Anthem".
• Censored Title: "This is the New Shit" became "This is the New *Hit*" when censored, which is ironically, still fitting. "Pretty as a Swastika" became "Pretty as a *$*" which is likely the biggest "Fuck you" done via censorship ever.
• Concept Album: Antichrist Superstar, Mechanical Animals, and Holy Wood actually form a trilogy about three interconnected main characters, Adam, Omega, and The Worm. Chronologically in the narrative, however, it goes in reverse order.
  • Somewhat debatable as to the order of the albums. Interpretations of the "Triptych" are an Epileptic Trees forest.
    • Manson himself has stated that they go in reverse order.
  • The Pale Emperor is one too, with Manson as, well, the fandom's not quite figured out everything yet. We need more literary critics. It is, however, based on the Faust myth, according to Manson.
• The Cover Changes the Meaning: The band has Grimmified several songs, including Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love" and the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams."
  • Cover Version: The band has also done fairly straight covers (minus Genre Shift) of "Personal Jesus" and "You're So Vain," ^note  Originally recorded by Carly Simon and subsequently Covered Up by a ton of other artists , the latter featuring guitar not by Twiggy as it was for the rest of the album, but by longtime friend Johnny Depp.
• Death Song: "The Death Song" is not this. "Count To Six And Die" is.
• Demoted to Extra: Roli Mosimann was chosen to produce Portrait of an American Family due to his work with Swans, but he turned in a flat and lifeless mix. As an Author's Saving Throw, Trent Reznor (who agreed with Manson that the mix "sucked") brought them to LA for seven weeks of remixing and re-recording, and Mosimann was demoted to "engineer" in the album credits. Daisy Berkowitz, after enough backstabbings to be legally a pin cushion, released this mix, which also has a previously unheard song, "Filth". One can judge it for themselves.
• Downer Ending:
  • The "Man That You Fear" video ends with Manson being stoned to death in a desert after being picked at random in a ritual. We don't actually see it—the video ends before any stones are thrown—but the implications are chilling enough.
  • Every concept album so far has had one: Antichrist Superstar ended with the Worm going insane, becoming the Antichrist, and destroying the world; Mechanical Animals ended with everybody overdosing on drugs and dying; Holy Wood ended with Adam's revolution being corrupted into exactly what it was fighting against and his ensuing suicide; even the less-conceptual Golden Age of Grotesque ended with "The Death of Art."
  • Born Villain ended with an Anti-Love Song about a mutually abusive relationship ("Breaking the Same Old Ground"), followed by a cover of "You're So Vain", which does admittedly lighten it a bit.
  • The Pale Emperor has a downer ending too, which makes sense, since it's based on the Faust myth.
• Drugs Are Bad: "Coma White" and "I Don't Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)". In fact, Mechanical Animals has a lot of anti-drug stuff. They also led to Brad Stewart's death; drug usage was rampant among the band at that time, but he was completely out of control, having become increasingly unstable and unreliable in addition to repeatedly overdosing.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Quite a bit.
  • Twiggy in the Antichrist Superstar era (convincing enough to make a Christian right wing group say he was a female guitarist who did things onstage, which is only half-right). This can be attributed to his long hair, makeup, and the trademark male Kinderwhore-style dresses and wigs he often wore. His lack of speaking in interviews kept his deep voice from being heard, which didn’t help this trope.
  • Manson also got into drag for the Nine Inch Nails video "Starfuckers, Inc." (a.k.a. "Starsuckers, Inc."), and in the "Long Hard Road Out of Hell" video. He was surprisingly convincing on both occasions. And then there were the prosthetic boobs from the cover of Mechanical Animals, which he also uses in the video for "The Dope Show".
  • Gidget Gein◊ and Zim Zum◊ also fit this trope.
  • After leaving the band, Daisy started going by his initials, SMP, and joined Jack Off Jill for a time. Seeing as he was decidedly not female, and it was a riot grrrl band, this had to be implimented.
• Face on the Cover: Every studio album except for Portrait of an American Family.
• Football Fight Song: The music video for The Fight Song
• Gender-Blender Name: Many of the male band members use female names as their stage names. (see Theme Naming for the reason)
• Goth Rock: Manson has been moving in this direction since 2015's The Pale Emperor; while the band's pre-2015 output showed influence from the genre (such as on Eat Me, Drink Me), categorizing their music as Goth was very contentious, as old school Goths felt that the term was being hijacked by the band and their fans, and Goths did not want the public to perceive Goth as being synonymous with Industrial Rock, which the band had fused with elements of Glam Rock and Goth. To this date, Goths and Manson fans are very divided as to whether they are a Goth band or merely influenced by the genre.
• Harsh Vocals: Obviously. Live, sometimes they will even become harsher (especially "Antichrist Superstar").
• Hidden Track: Antichrist Superstar has the promisingly-titled "Empty Sounds Of Hate," and of course it's a series of distorted voices ending with the same message that's heard at the very beginning of the album.
  • Mechanical Animals had one that was accessed by putting the CD into a computer.
  • "Misery Machine", the last song on Portrait Of An American Family is an 11 minute track, but the actual song is only five minutes long - there's a sample of dialogue from the John Waters film Desperate Living a few seconds after the song ends, followed by over seven minutes of telephone ringing sound effects, after which the track finally ends with an answering machine message from the offended parent of a young fan.
• I Am the Band: To the point where many people honestly believe that Marilyn Manson is a solo artist.
• Incredibly Long Note: More like Incredibly Long Scream. The live version of "Irresponsible Hate Anthem" on The Last Tour On Earth features Manson holding a "FUCK IIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!" for a good 20 seconds.
  • "Hey, Cruel World..." has Manson holding a very high scream for a about fourteen seconds.
  • "Para-Noir" has a scream that lasts approximately 26 seconds from the end of the third chorus.
• Indecipherable Lyrics: "The Beautiful People" is this for many people and all of The Golden Age of Grotesque is this for almost everyone, fans included.
• Industrial Rock: Their primary genre and its arguable Trope Codifiers alongside Nine Inch Nails, with the exception of a few albums (Mechanical Animals is Glam Rock and Eat Me, Drink Me is primarily Goth Rock, and many of their songs on albums don't care if you can put them in a single genre).
• Intentionally Awkward Title: Many, such as "This is the New Shit", "Antichrist Superstar", "President Dead" and "Arma-goddamn-motherfuckin-geddon".
  • Try telling someone about their cover of Patti Smith's song "Rock 'N' Roll Nigger" (from Easter), but performed on Manson's Smells Like Children. Just try.
  • "Baboon Rape Party", anyone?
• Kick the Dog: Suggested in "Little Horn":
  "Somebody better get the dog to kick"
• Large Ham: Add the passionate/over-the-top delivery with the weird imagery, and Manson ranks quite high on the hamminess.
• Lead Bassist: Gidget Gein and Twiggy Ramirez both got more attention than any of the guitarists. For a time, Twiggy became the guitarist^note which was actually his original instrument of choice way back when he was in Amboog-a-Lard, but he reverted back to bass so Tyler Bates could do guitars before he was ejected from the band in 2017.
• Lesser Star: Olivia Newton Bundy and ZsaZsa Speck, the original bassist and keyboardist, respectively.
• Lucky Charms Title: "♠" (read "Spade") off The Golden Age of Grotesque.
• Metal Scream: No, really? Especially prevalent in "Antichrist Superstar", but pops up a lot.
• Mickey Mousing: In the music video for "Antichrist Superstar" (which is just a video of a live performance), Manson manages to be a living being falling straight into the Uncanny Valley by moving like a badly controlled puppet, jerking harshly to the guitar.
• Mighty Whitey: Chris Rock described Marilyn himself this way in his opening monologue at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards:
  "And Marilyn Manson, worshipping the Devil, who thought that was a good idea? Whites always have to be the illest, blacks can't ever be the illest, whites always have to be the illest. A black guy will be like, 'I'm from Compton, I'm from Watts, I'm from the hood, you better recognize.' A white boy will be like, 'Yeah? Well, I'm from HELL!"
• Mind Screw: For some people, Manson and Twiggy's appearance when crossdressing.
  • Also, the Born Villain trailer (which is actually set to "Overneath The Path of Misery"). If the random Macbeth quotes halting the song and the general insanity don't get you, the eyeball in the vagina will. Also, it was co-written and directed by Shia LaBeouf.
• Mr. Fanservice: During the Spooky Kids days, this was the role of the bassist, Gidget Gein. Marilyn in his younger days was this for his skinny body, long hair, and habit of taking his clothes off on stage.
• My Country Tis of Thee That I Sting: His entire career is built around criticizing the hypocrisy within American society, especially by organized religion, schools and the government. Take a song named We're from America (2009): We're from America, we're from America, where we eat our young.
• N-Word Privileges: Averted in "Rock N Roll Nigger", a cover of Patti Smith, who is also white and therefore also averted the trope. Several other songs do the same. Manson's explained that he believes that words are just that, words, and that the intent is what matters, and the hatred behind using it with a racist intent is what makes it racist, and not using it like that isn't racist.
  • The word is also used in "Irresponsible Hate Anthem" in the line "Everybody's someone else's nigger".
• Ode to Intoxication: "The Dope Show" is, in-universe, serious, and in real life, sarcastic (with a major Misaimed Fandom) and "I Don't Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)" is anti-drug and serious.
• Ominous Music Box Tune: "Cryptorchid," "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," "Breaking the Same Old Ground".
• Perishing Alt-Rock Voice: One of the many singing styles, on display in many songs, including "The Nobodies" and "Four Rusted Horses".
• Pun-Based Title: "mOBSCENE" and "(s)AINT", both off of The Golden Age of Grotesque.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "King! Kill! Thirty-three!"
• Ripped from the Headlines: "Get Your Gunn" was inspired by David Gunn, an OB/GYN murdered by a pro-life fundamentalist outside of his clinic. He noted that the murder being committed by a pro-life activist was the ultimate hypocrisy he'd witnessed as a young adult.
  • Years later, he wrote "The Nobodies" as his response to the Columbine massacre.
• Recurring Riff: In Born Villain, the opening vocal growl from "No Reflection" is repeated in full in "The Gardener" and partially in "Disengaged".
• Religion Rant Song: "The Fight Song", "Cake and Sodomy" and "The Reflecting God", among many others.
• Revolving Door Band: You did read that Long List of former members at the top, right?
• Rock-Star Song: Mechanical Animals is a rockstar album.
• Room Full of Crazy: Some part of the "Tourniquet" official video.
• Satire: "This is the New Shit" may be this to...well, new music. It seems like just a mindless indulgance, but only on the surface. "Everything has been said before / Nothing left to say anymore..."
  • It's also sort of an attack on the fans who don't understand what his songs are about ("Do we get it? NO!"), but simply want more of it ("Do we want it? YEAH!"). This even shows in the Motor Mouth pre-chorus:
  Babble, babble, bitch, bitch
  Rebel, rebel, party, party
  Sex, sex, sex and don't forget the violence
  Blah, Blah, Blah, got your lovey-dovey, sad and lonely
  Stick your stupid slogan in, everybody sing along
• Sequel Song: "Coma Black" to "Coma White", although it's actually "Coma White" to "Coma Black".
• Sharp-Dressed Man: The Golden Age of Grosteque and The Pale Emperor era have the band in gothed up, vintage-style 30s suits.
• Shout-Out:
  • The "Inauguration of the Worm" and "Disintegrator Rising" cycles from Antichrist Superstar are references to Kenneth Anger's films Inauguration of the Pleasuredome and Lucifer Rising.
  • The line "We're from America/where we eat our young" sounds like a reference to Funkadelic's album America Eats Its Young.
  • Rather Hate Dumb-ishly, the chorus of "mOBSCENE" was accused of being too imitative of the chorus of Faith No More's "Be Aggressive" ^note both were based off a cheerleading routine that predates either song, "The Fight Song" was accused of being a Suspiciously Similar Song to "Song 2" and "Astonishing Panorama of the Endtimes" is occasionally charged with ripping off Ministry's "Burning Inside". invoked
  • "Heart Shaped Glasses" references the iconic glasses Dolores wore on the poster for Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, and the song itself talks about attraction to a much younger girl (this is also a reference to Warner's then girlfriend Evan Rachel Wood, who is 19 years younger than him and likes heart shaped glasses).
  • The fandom is still trying to figure out the number of shout outs. There's a lot. The "Born Villain" trailer mentioned under Mind Screw for example, opens with a reference to The Holy Mountain, whose director is a good friend of his and officiated his wedding to Dita von Teese.
• Singing Voice Dissonance: Manson is quite the US American talker. Listen to the live version of "I Don't Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)" from The Last Tour On Earth. US American Manson talking, Canadian Manson singing.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: His songs fall at the far cynical end of the scale.
• The Something Song: "The Love Song" on Holy Wood, followed immediately by "The Fight Song" and later on, "The Death Song".
• Songs of Solace: Mr. Manson has acknowledged their music's usage in this form.
• Spelling Song:
  • "Burning Flag"
    We've got our A-B-Cs and our F-U-C-K
    F-U-C-K
    F-U-C-K
  • "(s)AIN'T"
    I've got an 'F', and a 'C', and I got a 'K' too
    And the only thing that's missing is a bitch like 'U'
• Subliminal Seduction: "Tourniquet" begins with a repeated, back-masked phrase: "This is the lowest point of my vulnerability."
• Surreal Music Video: Most of them, but "Sweet Dreams" is an egregious example.
• Take That!: Usually aimed towards religion, mainstream media, mob mentality, etc. The first actual song on Portrait of an American Family, "Cake and Sodomy" was aimed towards the former two, inspired by Manson watching public access TV and seeing Pat Robertson preach about the evils of society before asking for the viewer's credit card number, followed by a man masturbating on the adjacent channel and asking for the same thing.
  • Unusually, there was one aimed at a section of the band's own fans. The song "This Is the New Shit" was written about fans who didn't even try to understand the point behind the band's music, preferring to just cheer everything indiscriminately.
• Theme Naming: The original band members' pseudonyms are formed by taking the first name of a female sex symbol, and the surname of a serial killer (i. e. Marilyn Monroe and Charles Manson). This practice stopped with Zim Zum in the Antichrist Superstar era.
• A Threesome is Manly: Rare all-male example in the "(s)AINT" video, with Marilyn Manson engaging in a threeway with former bassist Gidget Gein and CSI's Eric Szmanda.
• Title Track: Antichrist Superstar, Mechanical Animals, Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) (the title of the song is just "In the Shadow of the Valley of Death," however), The Golden Age of Grotesque, Eat Me, Drink Me, Born Villain.
  • Smells Like Children had a title track that wasn't included on the EP; it was performed live several times in the ensuing tour before being rearranged and slowed down to create the lumbering "Kinderfeld," which would then appear on Antichrist Superstar.
  • "The High End of Low" almost had one, but it was renamed "I Have To Look Up Just To See Hell". The phrase is still there.
  • Born Villain was originally to be called Co-Morbid, which would have meant no title track, but Manson felt it sounded too death metal.
  • The Pale Emperor is never said in the album. The album was called Deep Six originally.
• Übermensch: Manson plays this role in Antichrist Superstar.
• Unplugged Version: Many, oftentimes of more emotional songs like "The Man That You Fear" and "Coma White".
• Villains Act, Heroes React: This trope inspired Born Villain, with Manson bringing it up in interviews quite often. That's why he chooses to be the villain, because the villain is the one that fights for their beliefs, right or wrong, and tries to make a change.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The protagonists of Antichrist Superstar and Holy Wood.
• Word Salad Lyrics: Manson makes extensive use of contrasting imagery, such as religious idols, political icons, and childhood figures, with grotesque sexuality and gun violence.
• Wrench Whack: The song "Snake Eyes and Sissies" is about a psychotic guy and mentions using a wrench as a weapon in its beginning.

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When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed.

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