“All the Vilest Things” initially sounds like a song about retaliation. The speaker has been attacked, wounded, and subjected to things that were intended to destroy him, and much of the language is deliberately violent. Yet Manson's own explanation points in a different direction. He describes the song as being about “balancing your resentments” and determining the proper measure of punishment in matters of war. More importantly, he says that the song provides “a real balance to the idea of vengeance.” The lyrics suggest that this balance comes from recognizing the damage that has been done without allowing the desire for revenge to become the thing that defines what happens next. The opening establishes the situation immediately: “You tried your best To destroy me I don't want revenge Because you only Made me stronger.” There is no attempt to minimize what happened. The speaker acknowledges that someone genuinely tried to destroy him. What changes is his response t...
When Marilyn Manson was first named and accused of domestic abuse and sexual assault on social media in February 2021, and I read through the various statements against him, my suspicions immediately arose when they started using common language and describing something similar in style to how Bram Stoker slowly but ultimately reveals in his novel Dracula that Dracula is a vampire preying on and controlling his victims. And when the court complaints against Manson were being made public months later, and you can even see it in Evan Rachel Wood's documentary Phoenix Rising , they went even further in narrowing down every aspect of their relationship to Manson as them gradually realizing he was a monster and he was someone they needed to escape from. For those unfamiliar with the novel Dracula (though I'm sure everyone knows the basic story), here is a brief summary to help you understand how it unravels: Brief Summary of Bram Stoker's Dracula In Bram Stoker's horror no...