Revision as of 20:25, 18 December 2008

"The Beautiful People"

This article is about the song. For the single, see The Beautiful People (single).

"The Beautiful People" is the first single of the second album Antichrist Superstar. Its lyrics discuss two major themes: what Manson refers to as "the culture of beauty", 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 "justify [the existence of] the strong" (the so-called beautiful people). It remains known as one of Marilyn Manson's most famous and most successful original songs.

Appearances

Albums

• Antichrist Superstar
• Lest We Forget (The Best of)
• Lost & Found

Singles

• The Beautiful People

Versions

• The Beautiful People — Appears on Antichrist Superstar and the "The Beautiful People" single.
• The Beautiful People (Clean version) — Appears on the "The Beautiful People" promotional single.
• The Beautiful People (Edit) — Appears on Lest We Forget (The Best Of).
• The Horrible People — Appears on the "The Beautiful People" single, Remix & Repent and the Japan version of Lest We Forget (The Best Of).
• The Not So Beautiful People — Appears on the "The Beautiful People" single and the Japan version of Lest We Forget (The Best Of).
• The Beautiful People (Full Metal Jacket Remix) — Used as the opening theme for WWF RAW from 1996 to 1998; otherwise unreleased.
• The Beautiful People (Live) — Appears on The Last Tour on Earth.
• The Beautiful People (Live) — Appears on the Guns, God and Government World Tour DVD.
• The Beautiful People (Acoustic) — Recorded live with the Smashing Pumpkins on October 18, 1997 at a bridge benefit concert in Los Angeles, California.

Background information

"The Beautiful People" was written in 1994 by Marilyn Manson (lyrics) and Twiggy Ramirez (music). 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 of 2005 that "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".

The title of the song comes from Marilyn Bender's 1967 book The Beautiful People, 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 often used to describe the Kennedy family, a frequent source of inspiration in Marilyn Manson's work.

Themes

After a few seconds of backwards-guitar feedback and electronic noise, the track begins with a heavily-distorted spoken sample of Tex Watson declaring "[We would] swoop down on the town...[and] kill everyone that wasn't beautiful". (An undistorted version of this sample was also used in the Spooky Kids track "Dune Buggy").

The song is written in drop D tuning and is built primarily out of the notes of a diminished triad, each made into a power chord. It also incorporates extensive 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 jazzy, triplet feel.

Hard rock producer Sean Beavan, a musician with a close connection to jazz guitar, also appears on the track. Credited with "descending horn guitar", Beavan can be heard playing a repeated descending figure using a guitar effect which produces a brass instrument-like tone.

Lyrically, "The Beautiful People" is intertwined with the Antichrist Superstar album's overarching theme, a semi-narrative examination of the Nietzschean Übermensch. Within this context, the song 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.

Music video

Manson in his "grotesquely tall" form with the crowd

Directed by Floria Sigismondi, this music video has been described as "the creepiest of creepy videos". Filmed in the abandoned Goodenham and Worts distillery in Toronto, Canada, the clip depicts the band performing the song in a classroom-like setting adorned with medical prostheses and laboratory equipment. Intercut with performance footage are scenes of Manson on stilts, wearing a long gown-like costume, aviator goggles, and prosthetic makeup, making him appear bald and grotesquely tall. After being placed in this costume by similarly-attired attendants, he appears at a window to a cheering crowd in a scene reminiscent of a fascist rally, and later stands in the center of a circle while people march around him performing the Hitler salute. Other fast-cut scenes include extreme closeups of crawling earthworms; mannequin heads and hands; the boots of people marching; shots of the individual band members in bizarre costumes; and Manson in back and neck braces and a dental device that retracts 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 Video Music Awards (Best Rock Video, Best Special Effects).

The video is available on the Lest We Forget (The Best Of) bonus DVD, as well as on the VHS compilation God Is in the TV.

Lyrics

    I don't want you and I don't need you
    don't bother to resist, I'll beat you
    It's not your fault that you're always wrong
    the weak ones are there to justify the strong
    the beautiful people, the beautiful people,
    It's all relative to the size of your steeple
    you can't see the forest for the trees,
    and you can't smell
    your own shit on your knees 
    hey you, what do you see?
    something beautiful, something free?
    hey you, are you trying to be mean?
    if you live with apes, man, it's hard to be clean
    there's no time to discriminate,
    hate every motherfucker
    that's in your way
    the worms will live in every host
    it's hard to pick which one they eat most
    the horrible people, the horrible people
    it's as anatomic as the size of your steeple
    capitalism has made it this way,
    old-fashioned fascism
    will take it away
    hey you, what do you see?
    something beautiful, something free?
    hey you, are you trying to be mean?
    if you live with apes, man, it's hard to be clean
    there's no time to discriminate,
    hate every motherfucker
    that's in your way

Trivia

• The single peaked at number 26 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and remains one of Marilyn Manson's most famous and successful original songs. In a 2004 review, Richard Banks of the BBC declared the track "still the most impressive" in the band's catalogue, and it was ranked in 2006 at number 28 on VH1's 40 Greatest Metal Songs.