The Golden Age of Grotesque (song)

This article is about the song

For the album see The Golden Age of Grotesque (album)

For the art exhibition see The Golden Age of Grotesque (art exhibition)

"The Golden Age of Grotesque"
Song by Marilyn Manson
Album	The Golden Age of Grotesque
Released	May 5, 2003
Recorded	2002–2003 at the Doppelherz Studio in Hollywood, California; The Mix Room in Burbank, California
Genre	Dark Cabaret
Length	4:05
Label	Nothing, Interscope
Writer	Marilyn Manson
Composer	John 5, Marilyn Manson
Producer	Marilyn Manson, Tim Skold, Ben Grosse

"The Golden Age of Grotesque" is the sixth track on the 2003 release The Golden Age of Grotesque.

Appearances

Albums

• The Golden Age of Grotesque

Versions

• "The Golden Age of Grotesque" — Appears on The Golden Age of Grotesque.
• "The Golden Age of Grotesque" (Piano version) — A piano version played during the show in Berlin, Germany.

Lyrics

    All our monkeys have monkeys
    We drive our deathcrush diamond Jaguar limousines
    We're not fantastic motherfuckers,
    but we play them on TV
    It's A Dirty Word Reich,
    Say what you like.
    It's A Dirty Word Reich
    Say what you like.
    
    We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI
    And we aim to depress
    The SCABARET SACRILEGENDS
    This is the Golden Age of Grotesque
    We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI
    And we aim to depress
    The SCABARET SACRILEGENDS
    This is the Golden Age of Grotesque
    
    The devils are girls with Van Goh's missing ear
    You say what you want but filth is all that they hear
    And I've got the jigger
    To make all of you bigger, so
    "Ladies und Gentlemen...drop your pissroom bait
    And make sure you're not late, you tramps and lunatics."
    Here's A trick that's gonna make you
    Click.
    
    We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI
    And we aim to depress
    The SCABARET SACRILEGENDS
    This is the Golden Age of Grotesque
    We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI
    And we aim to depress
    The SCABARET SACRILEGENDS
    This is the Golden Age of Grotesque
    
    It's a Dirty Word Reich,
    Say what you like.
    It's A Dirty Word Reich,
    Say what you like.
    
    So my Bon Mots, Hit-boy Tommy Trons, Rowdy rowdies,
    Honey-fingered Goodbye Dolls:
    "Hellzapoppin, open your Third Nostril,
    Put on your black face and your god is gone."
    
    We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI
    And we aim to depress
    The SCABARET SACRILEGENDS
    This is the Golden Age of Grotesque
    We're the LOW ART GLOOMINATI
    And we aim to depress
    The SCABARET SACRILEGENDS
    This is the Golden Age of Grotesque
    We sing: La la la la lala la
    We sing: la lal la la la
    La la la la lala la
    We sing: La la la la la

Trivia

• Jaguar Cars, a British luxury car manufacturer, was previously known as SS Jaguar. The SS was dropped due to the usage by the Schutzstaffel in Nazi Germany.
• Low Art Gloominati is a reference to Illuminati, a Bavarian Enlightenment-era secret society.
• Scabaret Sacrilegeds is a crasis of cabaret legends with scab and sacrilegious.
• Van Goh is a misspelling of Vincent Willem van Gogh, a Dutch painter well know for having cut off part of his left ear.
• "I've got the jigger to make all of you bigger" and "here's a trick that's gonna make you click" are paraphrased quotes from Marshall McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. They're from McLuhan's essay on Men of Distinction where he analyses an alcohol advertisement. "Here, it is: "what's in the jigger that makes him bigger?" instead of "what's the trick that makes her click?""
• Open your third nostril refers to a dispregiative term for the communists created by Giovannino Guareschi, an Italian writer. The third nostril would be needed to expel cerebral matter to make room for party directives.
• Blackface is a style of theatrical makeup, used to take on the appearance of certain archetypes of American racism.
• "The song “The Golden Age of Grotesque” for example was written in pretty much 12 hours and performed and recorded. This was the one with the burning piano in mind. I just wanted to lay out my sack of notebooks - there were about 20 of them - and I had been writing down phrases that come from wherever I can find them. I spread them out and I started singing. It has such and odd phrasing and cadence, like after the chorus, I hit this high note on the word “Gloominati.” I was creating words that didn’t exist, but it seemed like the way I could paint this picture. Sometimes you have to mix colours."
• The song's working title was "Third Nostril".