Marilyn Manson: Lunchbox
If I hadn’t ever heard Marilyn Manson before, I could have had a similar experience listening to this as I did listening to KMFDM a couple of weeks ago. Namely, I think I might have been surprised at how simple and completely non-threatening the music is. Never before has such a mediocre musician been so successful at making a career for him- or herself merely by scaring parents with his or her image. And that’s saying something, as history is littered with mediocre musicians who have taken that route to stardom.
Marilyn Manson’s music isn’t horrible, but it is hardly special. If you take the second-highest tier of Mötley Crüe’s songs and make them about S&M and self-mutiliation instead of hookers and motorcycles, you’ve basically got Marilyn Manson. Its simplicity and slick production appeals to a large number of listeners, and that production hides some egregious songwriting faults that might turn off a lot more than they actually do. The band’s song “Lunchbox,” from their first album, Portrait Of An American Family, is a good example of this music: not all that good, but it holds some value as being an emblem of what withdrawn teenagers liked to listen to in 1995, despite being so obvious as to directly equate being a rock and roll star to getting back at bullies.
What it doesn’t deserve is its own single with four additional remixes, including a clean version (why bother when you’ve got several dirty versions right next to it?), and a cover of Tubeway Army’s “Down In The Park.” The album-version itself barely gets kept, and that’s in part due to me wanting to keep at least one track from every CD, if possible, just to remind myself that, yeah, that’s as good as it gets.
The remixes are pretty bad. The song just isn’t rich enough to deserve any remix, much less four, and I suppose they did the best they could with the source material, but this is kind of what a student might make in Remixing 101. They’re all almost identical to the original, tend to emphasize one part, be it the roaring, held guitar chord or the “pow pow pow” lyrics, and consist largely of filler to get that student to their five-minute minimum for their final assignment. Of course, if said student picked such an unremixable song to remix, they should probably fail the course anyway.
Still, Manson is a marketing genius, and this single’s provocative artwork probably made him at least five figures net. I swear, the dumbest parents are the most vocal. Why would you be scared by such silliness?
I can’t think of a worse, more ridiculous concept than this single, so it’s a rare solo lunchbox. I’m sure Manson the jillionaire with the Playboy-model girlfriend is totally pissed.
Update: Okay, I just published this, and then noticed for the first time the “Lunchbox”/Miss Piggy Lunchbox connection. The single rated itself.
Rating:
Keepers: “Lunchbox”
Filed Between: Malfunkshun (Friendship Ring) and Marilyn Manson’s Smells Like Children
Tags: 1 lunchbox, 1995, CD reviews, J-mez' collection, music