"You're not afraid of the dark, are you?"
— Slim Shady shortly before explaining why you should be, "Music Box"
Eminem made a name for himself as one of the most twisted lyricists in all of rap music (as well as just music in general), his songs running the gamut from darkly hilarious to just plain dark. This is in part because of his in-depth knowledge of the horror conventions which, when combined with the horrors he's suffered throughout his life, made for a catalogue of songs guaranteed to make you pray for the light of day right away.
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The Slim Shady LP
- "97 Bonnie And Clyde" from The Slim Shady LP (originally titled "Just the Two of Us"). It's one of his most haunting songs, sung from the point of view of Shady talking to his daughter, Hailie after murdering his wife for infidelity. He has his little daughter help him unload the dead wife from the trunk of his car and dump her corpse in a lake.
- While "Just Don't Give A Fuck"'s lyrics aren't too terrifying in and of themselves, the beat to both the EP and LP versions features a loop of what sounds like a large and possibly malfunctioning industrial device throughout the entire song.
- Em's lyrics on "Guilty Conscience" as the proverbial shoulder devil to Dr. Dre's (presumed) angel. At first, he just sounds shameless, casually encouraging an armed robbery and statutory rape, but in the final verse, when he encourages a man to kill his unfaithful wife, it reaches a near-visceral anger.Fuck slittin' her throat! Cut this bitch's head off!!
- "Brain Damage", a graphic narrative about Em, as a young child, dealing with a Barbaric Bully at school. The bullying starts out with things like getting his lunch seat stolen and getting shoved into lockers, only to escalate into Marshall getting his nose broken and getting nearly choked to death. The song also ends with Marshall getting beaten by his mother to the point where his skull cracks open and his brains fall out. The worst part is that none of the school's authority figures that children are told they can trust do anything to help. One teacher expresses their desire to just sit back and watch the beating happen, and the school's principal helps the bully beat his helpless victim to near-death.
- "My Fault", about Em giving mushrooms to a woman he meets at a party. The song is mostly humorous around the beginning and middle parts, but quickly turns south when the girl suffers an overdose. The song ultimately ends with one of the most heartwrenching conclusions of any Eminem song.
The Marshall Mathers LP
- "Stan", a famously dark song about a Loony Fan who eventually commits a murder-suicide because Em won't answer any of his fan letters in a timely manner, and it has caused him to think he's deliberately not writing him back.
- The third verse, where Stan is recording a tape for Em while driving drunk, completely south of sanity, and over time you can hear his girlfriend screaming from the trunk before he crashes through a bridge and into the water below.
- And then you get to the final stanza, wherein Em responds to Stan's latest letter, revealing that he didn't actually have the time to write back, and imploring him to get help, as he doesn't want him to do something that will hurt himself. As he recalls a disturbing story he heard on the news, he brings the song to its chilling ending.Some dude was drunk and drove his car over a bridge
And had his girlfriend in the trunk, and she was pregnant with his kid
And in the car they found a tape, but they didn't say who it was to
Come to think about it, his name was...it was you.
Damn.- The music video makes things worse. Look in the train window after Eminem makes his realization.
- An additional scary element from the video is actually in the long version, before the song begins. We see Stan pouring bleach over his head that turns his brown hair blonde within a matter of minutes. To anyone who's bleached their hair, this indicates that the bleach is pretty strong. And then he rubs it over his face, including into his eyes without even flinching...
- "Kim", the prequel to "'97 Bonnie & Clyde". The song isn't so much rapped as screamed between Eminem and his impression of Kim, and in its six-minute timespan, it reaches heights of intensity Whitehouse would be proud of. It starts out innocently enough with Em watching Hailie sleep, but quickly goes south as he shoves Kim into a car and reveals he's murdered her new boyfriend and their 4-year-old son.note It ends with him slitting her throat in the woods.You were supposed to love ME!NOW BLEED, BITCH, BLEED!
- Also, the already unsettling hook may have been worse according to an interview with producer Jeff Bass:"When I wrote it, it was meant to have someone like Marilyn Manson or Ozzy Osbourne sing the hook, so I said, “Em, go in there and just sing the hook so that we have it on tape and then we can show Marilyn or whoever we’re going to get on there what the part is supposed to be.” And then I’m like, “Ah, forget it. You sound great. It’s out of tune, it’s perfect, it sounds raw.“ And that was part of what his sound was. Early Eminem was kind of raw.
- Also, the already unsettling hook may have been worse according to an interview with producer Jeff Bass:
- "Amityville" is a brazen ode to Em's hometown exalting its status as the then-murder capital of the country. Of note is Bizarre's guest appearance, in which he packs his weight's worth of reprobacy into a mere eight bars.
The Eminem Show
- On "Cleanin' Out my Closet" from The Eminem Show he mentions that his mother had Münchausen Syndrome by proxy, which led to her lying to her young son that he was very sick, and it's implied that he was also led to believe he was dying. He did grow up, of course, but that must have been pretty scary, since young kids don't have any real reason or inclination to disbelieve a parent.
Encore
- The album Encore is not for the faint of heart. The last track closes with Eminem shooting his crowd and killing himself, with a robotic voice of Em ending the album saying, "See you in hell, fuckers." If you thought hearing the shooting was scary, the album booklet depicts photos of audience members either dead, dying, or running in terror.
Relapse
- "Same Song and Dance" is about kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering celebrities, with bouncy, echoing guitar strains and ghostly moans in the background giving the whole song an etherial, dreamlike feel. The title is perhaps the worst part, as the "song" refers to his victims' screams, and the "dance" refers to their struggle to escape as he has his way with them. And to him, it's just the same ol' "song and dance", showing he's become so desensitized to the horrible things he does that it's become hum-drum to him.
- "3 a.m." is a horror movie made into music; which was so disturbing it premiered on Cinemax of all places
- The music video is even more unsettling. All of the shots of bloody corpses, Em with those creepy white eyes...and just when you think it's over, Em hits you with a Jump Scare at the very end.
- "Music Box", which is possibly his most outright disturbing song to date. Cannibalism, murder, Satanism, pedophilia, stalking, rape, torture... so many great, wholesome flavors make up this little nightmare anthem.
- The aptly-titled "Stay Wide Awake" can best be summed up as the ramblings of a nihilistic Serial Rapist who describes his crimes in stomach-churning detail.
- "Insane" is a horrible Black Comedy song about young Slim Shady being repeatedly raped by his stepfather into the violent insanity that he has today. While the content of the song itself is absurd, the combination of it with the matter-of-fact delivery is horrifying. Uncharacteristically for songs about Slim's childhood, he never gets revenge on anybody. In the final verse, Slim, trying to figure out why he does the awful crimes he does, has a traumatic flashback to his abuse and regresses mentally and vocally to childhood. The song ends in the flashback, where his stepfather is raping him again, presumably on loop throughout Shady's entire life.
The Marshall Mathers LP 2
- "Bad Guy" off of MMLP2. It has undoubtedly the most evil beat out of any Eminem song, and it features the same high-pitched string patch that drove "Insane" from Relapse. On top of that, the song is about Stan's brother trying to kill Eminem in a successful effort that ends in the same sort of murder-suicide that took Stan and his girlfriend. And that's just part one.
Music to be Murdered By
- Music to be Murdered By has a song called 'Stepdad', in which Eminem raps about the abuse him and has family received by his stepfather. Whether this is based on true events or not, there are some very traumatising things done, including, but not limited to, arguing and physically assaulting his mother, gaslighting him by turning the kitchen lights on and saying Marshall done so, and even stomping on Eminem's pet chihuahua for urinating on the carpet, so hard that the vet had to euthanize the dog. Granted, Eminem gets revenge on his abusive stepfather by beating him to death, but the song itself is still horrifying.
- Even before the song starts, there is a very pleasant intro to the song, in which the titular stepfather character wakes up a child (Presumably representing Marshall as a child) and then beats him for allegedly leaving the lights on, profusely swearing at him and ignoring the child's protests that he didn't. If you've ever had an abusive parent, be it a biological parent or a step parent, just hearing this intro could bring back traumatising memories.
Unsorted
- The Slim Shady EP, the demo that got Em his big break, is just full of it. It starts off with an intro where Slim Shady comes back to life after having been previously "killed" and orders Eminem to look into the mirror as he resists and screams in the background, all accompanied by the sound of shattering glass...
- "Public Enemy #1" from The Re-Up may not be as visceral as the other songs in Eminem's repertoire, but it is a masterclass of Orwellian Paranoia Fuel. In the song, Marshall expresses the sincere belief that the government is trying to kill him (in real life, he had good reason to believe the FBI was stalking him because he wished death on President Bush in a song), and he makes it clear in no uncertain terms that, once the government has declared you an enemy, they will find and eliminate you and there's nothing you can do to stop it. The song ends with Eminem being cut off by a gunshot.
- Em's collab with Skylar Grey called "Twisted" is one helluva creepy song. No rapping aside, Em sings about wanting to kill his girlfriend simply because she annoys him. The end also has the two of them giggling at the end of the track, which is even creepier.
