The Beautiful People (song)
"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).
Contents
Appearances
Albums
Singles
- "The Beautiful People" Pt. 1 and 2
Versions
- "The Beautiful People" — Appears on Mechanical Animals.
- "The Beautiful People" (Edit) — Appears on the "The Beautiful People" promotional single.
- "The Horrible People" — Appears on the "The Beautfioul People" Pt. 1 single and Remix & Repent.
- "The Not So Beautiful People" — Appears on the "The Beautiful People" Pt. 2 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 WWE Raw from 1996 to 1998; otherwise unreleased.
Background information
"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".
The title of the song comes from Marylin 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 particularly used to describe the Kennedy family, a frequent source of inspiration in Marilyn Manson's work.
Themes
The track begins, after a few seconds of backwards-guitar feedback and electronic noise, with an extremely heavily-distorted spoken sample; it is Tex Watson declaring "[We would] swoop down on the town. . . [and] kill everyone that wasn't beautiful".
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 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 jazzy, 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. 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.
Music video
The music video, directed by Floria Sigismondi, is what has been described as "the creepiest of creepy videos". The clip, filmed in the abandoned Goodenham and Worts distillery in Toronto, Canada, 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 march around him giving the Hitler salute. 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 back 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 Video Music Awards: Best Rock Video and 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
The drugs they say
Make us feel so hollow
We love in vain
Narcissistic and so shallow
The cops and queers
To swim you have to swallow
Hate today
There's no love for tomorrow
We're all stars now in the dope show
There's lots of pretty, pretty ones
That want to get you high
But all the pretty, pretty ones
Will leave you low
And blow your mind
We're all stars now in the dope show
They love you when you're on all the covers
When you're not then they love another
The drugs they say
Are made in California
We love your face
We'd really like to sell you
The cops and queers
Make good-looking models
I hate today
Who will I wake up with tomorrow?
There's lots of pretty, pretty ones
That want to get you high
But all the pretty, pretty ones
Will leave you low
And blow your mind
They love you when you're on all the covers
When you're not then they love another
We're all stars now in the dope show
