Is stan em's best song ever?

[Rash J]

Yeah that line confused me at first but what I think it meant was Stan hopes Em can't sleep or even if he does, he'll dream about it. Like either way, he can't escape from the guilt. Asleep or awake.

lol no, it was a mistake. Em noticed it as well, that's why in his performance at the grammy he changed the lyrics from "can't sleep" to "go to sleep"

lol are you serious?
wow okay i just watched that grammy performance. i can't believe this whole time i convinced myself that line was deliberate. man i feel stupid

edit: but it seems like the correction was only made during the grammys. watched 4 or 5 performances that Em performed til that verse, and he did it according to the lyrics in the song. hmmm...

[Rash J]

I just give stan more credit cuz it introduced a new ground of rap. Its like yknow a song like rock bottom has been made a lot of times by a lot of artists. The concept of stan is original.

Exactly. The imagery this song brings is undeniable. I remember being overwhelmed the first time I heard it, and it turned me into a fan. While it's not his BEST song, it's his GREATEST song (along with Lose Yourself)

[Alaine]

Yeah that line confused me at first but what I think it meant was Stan hopes Em can't sleep or even if he does, he'll dream about it. Like either way, he can't escape from the guilt. Asleep or awake.

lol no, it was a mistake. Em noticed it as well, that's why in his performance at the grammy he changed the lyrics from "can't sleep" to "go to sleep"

lol are you serious?
wow okay i just watched that grammy performance. i can't believe this whole time i convinced myself that line was deliberate. man i feel stupid

edit: but it seems like the correction was only made during the grammys. watched 4 or 5 performances that Em performed til that verse, and he did it according to the lyrics in the song. hmmm...

well he's probably used to the original lyrics but made the correction specially for the grammy because he wanted it to be perfect.
It's not like it's a key line or something, song is classic because of the concept alone.

[GenePeer]

"Say Goodbye to Hollywood" has always left me in awe. I can't see how you'd have a best song for Em who released so many great songs. Maybe best songs, but that would defeat the purpose of the thread, non?

[One Mic]

I'm NOT saying this was the intention (I'm just simply putting it out there) but the "line that he messed up" according to some people could be percieved as just being a natural and realistic piece of dialogue, in Stan's situation at the time. (3rd verse)

Like this text in the quote box below says; Stan was about to commit suicide by driving off of a bridge, after drinking vodka. He was obviously drunk, and his words were slurred and he was clearly under the influence of depressants, as evidenced in the line "I'm on a thousand downers now, I'm drowsy"

Stan also mistakenly referred to Phil Collin's "In The Air Tonight" as...... "In The Air Of The Night"

^ That was clearly deliberate

And the whole sleep/dreaming thing, maybe Eminem thought it "sounded good" and was good/realistic anger that Stan would actually say, and he could get away with it due to Stan's current situation??

The third verse is Stan recording himself onto a audio cassette in the car as he is about to commit suicide by driving off of a bridge after drinking vodka. His words are slurred, and he is clearly under the influence of depressants, as evidenced by the line, "I'm on a thousand downers now, I'm drowsy." His pregnant girlfriend can be heard screaming in the trunk (he even stops himself for a moment to yell at her: "Shut up, bitch, I'm tryin' to talk!") and the rain and thunder are loud and insistent. Stan, enraged, addresses Eminem as "Mr. I'm-Too-Good-to-Call-or-Write-My-Fans". He explains his predicament: "I'm in the car right now, I'm doing 90 on the freeway/Hey Slim, I drank a fifth of vodka, you dare me to drive?" (quoting "My Name Is" on the previous Eminem album, The Slim Shady LP). This is followed by a reference to a Phil Collins song "In the Air Tonight", misquoting it as "In the Air of the Night." Specifically, Stan refers to an urban legend that the song is about Collins seeing a man drowning, while a closer bystander does nothing to save him. Screaming is heard and Stan reveals that his pregnant girlfriend is in the trunk suffocating "Shut up bitch. I'm tryin' to talk, Hey Slim, That's my girlfriend screaming in the trunk/But I didn't slit her throat I just tied her up," once again referencing Eminem's song "'97 Bonnie and Clyde" in which Eminem implies that he had slit his wife's throat before putting her in the trunk and dropping her off in a lake ("And don't worry about that little booboo on her throat/It's just a little scratch, it don't hurt/Her was eatin' dinner while you were sleepin' and spilled ketchup on her /Mama's messy, ain't she/We'll let her wash off in the water"). Stan vents, revealing the depths of his anger: "I hope you can't sleep and you dream about it/and when you dream I hope you can't sleep and you scream about it/I hope your conscience eats at you and you can't breathe without me!" At the end, Stan realizes too late that he will be unable to send the tape to Eminem ("oh shit, I forgot, how am I supposed to send this shit out?"). A car crash then follows, as the car breaks through the bridge's rails and falls into the water below

[NicoleEM]

"I hope you can't sleep and you dream about it/And when you dream I hope you can't sleep and you scream about it/I hope your conscience eats at you and you can't breathe without me!"
I wouldn't say he made a mistake,i think it was wrote this way to show how Stan was so drunk and angry that he couldn't think straight.But maybe that's just me.
Onn Topic:No,i consider Rock Bottom one of his best,it's just perfect.Stan is ok,but not my fav.

[Devil'sAdvocate]

Rock Bottom

[EminemBase]

I think you'd have to at least say like...

Best storytelling track, best X or something. Or it's too vague. He has too many for different reasons.

Even if you were to break it down to best story track, I think probably not. I mean... "97 Bonnie and Clyde", "Stan" and "Kim" are a masterpiece trio and undoubtedly the best three storytelling tracks in hip-hop history, I think. They made every storytelling prior look cheap and tacky. They're so real, so nuanced, so well-done. So artistic and extreme.

Um, so no. "Stan" is definitely one of his most important and resonant songs. Not his 'best' in anything though I don't think. MAYBE the best out of the three, but I'd maybe have to give it to "97 Bonnie and Clyde" or "Kim" as the execution of both = New heights for... music, in general.

[Fa-Q]

no, he fucked up 1 line. The concept is genius & the song is historical though.

Rock Bottom is the closet to perfect Eminem's song for me

Alaine with the genius response

[Elision]

There's no "best" song. It's a genius song. But it lacked much wordplay and other features like that (which obviously it didn't need of course).

[Shady50]

No My 1st Single is his best song ever. 1-800 I'm a dick sucka I'd love to suck a dick. Fuckin' Genius.

[classthe_king]

I think you'd have to at least say like...

Best storytelling track, best X or something. Or it's too vague. He has too many for different reasons.

Even if you were to break it down to best story track, I think probably not. I mean... "97 Bonnie and Clyde", "Stan" and "Kim" are a masterpiece trio and undoubtedly the best three storytelling tracks in hip-hop history, I think. They made every storytelling prior look cheap and tacky. They're so real, so nuanced, so well-done. So artistic and extreme.

Um, so no. "Stan" is definitely one of his most important and resonant songs. Not his 'best' in anything though I don't think. MAYBE the best out of the three, but I'd maybe have to give it to "97 Bonnie and Clyde" or "Kim" as the execution of both = New heights for... music, in general.

Dance With The Devil?

[EminemBase]

I think you'd have to at least say like...

Best storytelling track, best X or something. Or it's too vague. He has too many for different reasons.

Even if you were to break it down to best story track, I think probably not. I mean... "97 Bonnie and Clyde", "Stan" and "Kim" are a masterpiece trio and undoubtedly the best three storytelling tracks in hip-hop history, I think. They made every storytelling prior look cheap and tacky. They're so real, so nuanced, so well-done. So artistic and extreme.

Um, so no. "Stan" is definitely one of his most important and resonant songs. Not his 'best' in anything though I don't think. MAYBE the best out of the three, but I'd maybe have to give it to "97 Bonnie and Clyde" or "Kim" as the execution of both = New heights for... music, in general.

Dance With The Devil?

Yeah it's a good song. Not approaching those three though.

What makes those three extra-powerful is the fact Em makes them feel real-time. Where as everybody else "narrates" stories, 'he did X' 'she did Y' etc. - Em just fully commits to the song being the situation. Making it so much more powerful.

Like on "97 Bonnie and Clyde", he isn't narrating what he did that day, he's just doing it. He's in the car talking to his daughter, with his wife in the trunk. On "Stan", he's not telling you what Stan did, is doing or is gonna do, he just becomes Stan, driving a car off a bridge.

"Kim" is probably the most powerful though. Again, just totally commits to it like an audio movie, the voice acting is extreme. Also the naunce in his conversational writing that adds to the realism, in all of them. He doesn't just write to impress, he writes to convince.

I think Immortal T is a bit of a dick too, don't really like him that much as a person, consider him a bit of a wannabe political rebel, think he's a bit pretentious and an overrated lyricist.

[buffalo bill]

"I hope you can't sleep and you dream about it/And when you dream I hope you can't sleep and you scream about it/I hope your conscience eats at you and you can't breathe without me!"
I wouldn't say he made a mistake,i think it was wrote this way to show how Stan was so drunk and angry that he couldn't think straight.But maybe that's just me.

I always thought that was obvious.

[classthe_king]

I think you'd have to at least say like...

Best storytelling track, best X or something. Or it's too vague. He has too many for different reasons.

Even if you were to break it down to best story track, I think probably not. I mean... "97 Bonnie and Clyde", "Stan" and "Kim" are a masterpiece trio and undoubtedly the best three storytelling tracks in hip-hop history, I think. They made every storytelling prior look cheap and tacky. They're so real, so nuanced, so well-done. So artistic and extreme.

Um, so no. "Stan" is definitely one of his most important and resonant songs. Not his 'best' in anything though I don't think. MAYBE the best out of the three, but I'd maybe have to give it to "97 Bonnie and Clyde" or "Kim" as the execution of both = New heights for... music, in general.

Dance With The Devil?

Yeah it's a good song. Not approaching those three though.

What makes those three extra-powerful is the fact Em makes them feel real-time. Where as everybody else "narrates" stories, 'he did X' 'she did Y' etc. - Em just fully commits to the song being the situation. Making it so much more powerful.

Like on "97 Bonnie and Clyde", he isn't narrating what he did that day, he's just doing it. He's in the car talking to his daughter, with his wife in the trunk. On "Stan", he's not telling you what Stan did, is doing or is gonna do, he just becomes Stan, driving a car off a bridge.

"Kim" is probably the most powerful though. Again, just totally commits to it like an audio movie, the voice acting is extreme. Also the naunce in his conversational writing that adds to the realism, in all of them. He doesn't just write to impress, he writes to convince.

I think Immortal T is a bit of a dick too, don't really like him that much as a person, consider him a bit of a wannabe political rebel, think he's a bit pretentious and an overrated lyricist.

I don't really like 97 Bonnie and Clyde or Kim. Him talking in baby talk is annoying and him screaming the whole time is deffinitely annoying, it's like they're not even rap songs, they're just him in a situation happening to be rhyming, and maybe that's why you like them because they seem like a real situation but I don't really like listening to them. I think Stan is the only song that contends with Dance With The Devil but the twist in DWTD is better than Stans so it's wow effect gives it the edge.