It's the economy of language-so much narrative information packed in a tight verse-that makes the song's chorus hit like such a tidal wave of inspiration and relief. It's easy to forget how quickly the verse moves, taking you from backstage to Rabbit's choke of a performance and all the way back to the trailer he calls home. "His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy," raps Eminem, transporting you to that backroom at a club and giving you a sense of the anxiety. DRīest Line: "His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy/There's vomit on his sweater already: mom's spaghetti"Īt a certain point it becomes difficult to separate a song like "Lose Yourself" from its context-a song can only be blasted at sports stadiums for so long before it starts to lose its subtlety-but even if the opening guitar chords of this track make you think of a car commercial now, the words still take you back to a specific time and a place. It gives me the chills just thinking about it. The final bars-where the alarm rings and he wakes up to Hailie on a swing in the yard and kisses Kim-is like Leonardo DiCaprio's recurring dream in Inception, when he sees his kids running to meet him but never sees where they're going.
The first single off his Greatest Hits compilation, it was one of the last songs he released to radio before descending into his drug-induced hiatus, which makes the pill-popping, plane-crashing and suicide-shooting all the more meaningful. It's jarring, and even more so in retrospect, that Em can almost have an out-of-body experience, looking at himself sinking into pill-popping depression due to the pressures on him as a parent versus him as a massive superstar. He spends the first 14 bars begging her to come back, only to undo absolutely everything with that final couplet-"I know I'm a liar, if she ever tries to fucking leave again/I'ma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire." -DRīest Line: "'Now go up there and show 'em that you love 'em more than us'/That's what they want, they want you Marshall/They keep screamin' your name/It's no wonder you can't go to sleep, just take another pill/Yeah, I bet you you will"
While it may not have the most classic lines in the song-that distinction falls to the first verse's "I can't tell you what it really is/I can only tell you what it feels like/And right now it's a steel knife in my windpipe," or maybe the final words of the second verse: "But you lied again/Now you get to watch her leave out the window/Guess that's why they call it window pain"-but it's the most hopeless, and maybe that's what makes it the most memorable. The massive track-his highest-selling single to date-about domestic violence and abusive relationships hits an almost unbearable crescendo in the third verse.
Best Line: "Maybe that's what happens when a tornado meets a volcano/All I know is I love you too much to walk away though"
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