Cozy Thoughts: Week 4

This week, I wrote about songs that I found disturbing, terrifying, creepy or controversial for their time.

It’s easy to make fun of Eminem in 2019. He makes music for guys who play Call of Duty on Xbox Live. He makes music for men who get their haircut at Sports Clips. Marshall makes music for people who think Old Bay seasoning is too spicy.

All jokes aside, there was a time when Em didn’t always leave the house with that hat-hoodie combo and was the most controversial artist in pop culture. His personal life played out in the media and on wax. While it wasn’t uncommon for an artist’s personal life to be discussed in the music, The Marshall Matters LP’s “Kim” was a controversy all in its self.

The concept of the song is Em cooing and talking to his daughter while taking a drive somewhere and then rapidly turns his attention to his ex wife, Kim, berating her in a scornful 6:18 record.

“Kim” starts off calming. It’s oddly cute and then plays a diminished (dim6) chord and the mood of the song becomes a horror story. The rest of the record is a verbal and domestic abuse played out for the world to hear.

Even if it was fiction, “Kim” sounded too close to home.

In Eminem’s book “Angry Blonde,” he said he was inspired to write the song after watching a movie and even played it for Kim when they were cordial again.

“I remember I was watching a movie one day that inspired me to write a love song, but I didn’t want to make a corny love song,” he said. “It had to be some bugged-out shit. Though I don’t remember what movie it was, I do remember feeling the frustration of us breaking up and having a daughter all in the mix. I really wanted to pour my heart out, but yet I wanted to scream.”

So long, I don’t wanna go on listening to this song ever again.

Scarface was high out of his mind when he wrote “The Diary.” Like, rockstar levels of high. So inebriated, that he doesn’t even remember writing most of the records.

In his autobiography “Diary of a Madman,” Scarface said he made the original production for “I Seen a Man Die” before letting long-time engineer Mike Dean add organs and swapping out the drums. It was weeks before any lyrics were written for the song.

“I couldn’t think of anything to add to it,” he said. “One night, I took a painkiller, cracked open a 40 of Miller Lite, smoked a joint, and just started writing. I was so fucking high that I was losing my shit, and I remember laying on the floor and making promises to God, like, Lord, if you let me come down off of this high, I promise I won’t get high like this anymore.”

‘Face sounded so sinister and so convincing that it’s hard to believe that the story he’s telling is fiction. He does mention that he pulled the emotion and ideas from all the death and violent things he saw growing up. He wrote about how depression and death fueled some his biggest and most touching records. How could it be any other way?

“ I hear you breathin’ but your heart no longer sounds strong
But you kinda scared of dying so you hold on
And you keep on blacking out and your pulse is low
Stop trying to fight the reaper, just relax and let it go”

If the grim reaper was a poet, it would be Scarface.

My first thought when I listened to “Comfortably Numb” was ‘This must be what drugs sound like.’

The chords start off so soothing and paralyzing, that I think that Roger Waters must have been on all the muscle relaxers and hallucinogens when writing this.

Pink is high out of his mind, and a doctor attempts to wake him up. He can hear the voice but isn’t responding to the medics attempts at first. When the doctor does get him up, he gives him a shot of some sort of stimulant and then tells him of course there’s side effects before sending Pink on stage to perform.

It’s such a well written song but unlike the previous column about Scarface, Waters was not writing this while high or even intended for the song to be about drugs. Waters wrote the lyrics from the perspective of when he was ill as a child and then relating that feeling again as an adult.

“I remember having the flu or something, an infection with a temperature of 105 and being delirious,” he said.

Another great way to enjoy this song is to watch No Life Shaq’s first-time reaction listening Pink Floyd.