Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

[SONGS OF THE DECADE] #13 Eminem – Lose Yourself

Posted on | December 18, 2009 | No Comments

SONGS OF THE DECADE #13

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

Eminem – Lose Yourself (2002)

Lose Yourself – Eminem

Eminem was and still is something of a contradiction. He’s a white rapper. He speaks from personal pain, but wants to kill those who caused it  mercilessly. He is called out for being misogynistic and homophobic, but if you point out the same themes in his even more extreme black contemporaries, you’re a racist.

Most perplexing of all, Eminem’s a good musician, a really good one. Nonetheless, his skin color and musical style of choice make it exceedingly hard to defend him on purely musical terms.

For a few months in 2002, however, all that noise stopped. He had to make a movie to do it, and he had to stop screaming and sobbing for just one second. But he did so with a song that lifted hearts and minds, the kind of song that is always needed, and especially from an songwriter deemed, however fruitlessly, to be the greatest of his generation. That emotional effect still stays even 5 or 6 purported “generation defining” artists later. Listening to this song without the entire context is difficult, but worth the effort. At the very least, watch 8 Mile and wait two hours to let its emotional resonance sink in.

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