When Marilyn Manson's One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 debuted at No. 41 on the Billboard 200, Forbes described the result as a new career low for the controversial musician. In terms of the Billboard 200 itself, that description is accurate. Chapter 2 became Manson's first traditional studio album since his debut to miss the Top 40, falling one position short of the threshold that every other regular studio album had reached since Portrait of an American Family . His previous album, One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1 , had reached No. 32 in 2024, while We Are Chaos had reached No. 8 in 2020. It would therefore be pointless to argue that the No. 41 position somehow does not represent a decline. It plainly does. What deserves closer examination, however, is what that decline actually tells us about Manson's audience and his current position within the music industry, because the Billboard 200 is only one measurement of an album's performance. When the oth...
Evan Rachel Wood Coming Into 2019 As we entered 2019, Evan Rachel Wood continued her activist role as a self-proclaimed warrior fighting on behalf of all women, and she made sure all women knew this when she gave a stirring speech at the third annual Women's March on January 18th, where she said among other things: "When you are knocked down, you get back up. Keep getting back up. Now, women are really good at that. We’ve had a lot of practice. But we are tired. I’m tired. As a mother, as a rape survivor, as a domestic violence survivor, I am tired." Almost a few weeks later, Evan revealed in a Nylon essay she wrote that she had once committed herself to a mental hospital, specifically when she was 22 years old after a suicide attempt. A few days after publication, on February 2nd, the Daily Mail published an awkward article of Evan emerging from LAX in her first public appearance since writing that essay. Chronologically, her stay in the mental hospital coincides wi...