There is a point in One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 where the language of survival finally becomes the language of retaliation. “The Arsonist” is that point. The song is not simply about having survived an attempt to destroy you. It is about what happens afterward, when the person who has been burned decides that the fire did not finish him and that the scars it left behind have become part of his strength. Manson himself described the song as the moment when the narrative of the two chapters “crystallizes into a battle stance,” and, referring to the painting he created for it, said that the “burned scar tissue” had formed into armor. That description gets very close to the heart of the song. The fire has not disappeared. It has changed him. The title is important because Manson does not call the song The Survivor or The Victim . He calls it "The Arsonist." An arsonist deliberately starts a fire, and this changes the entire perspective of the song. The speaker is no...
Though she had just released her second studio album some months before and was nominated for four Grammy's including Best New Artist in 2020, before February 4th of 2021, most people had never really heard of Phoebe Bridgers. All of a sudden, she is all over the media making an accusation on Twitter against Marilyn Manson to supplement the bombardment of accusations of domestic abuse and sexual assault against him made a few days earlier by Evan Rachel Wood and others. She obviously felt like she could contribute something, even though she herself was never acquainted with Manson either romantically or as a friend. Her claim was that she heard something suspicious from Manson one day as a teenager when she went over Manson's house with some friends, and by tweeting what this suspicious thing was, Phoebe Bridgers automatically was listed as one of Marilyn Manson's accusers, and became much more known then she was before. In fact, her name would become almost a household nam...