#ThrowbackThursday: “Stan” by Eminem Featuring Dido

by Sean Smith

This week marks sixteen years since Eminem released his third studio album The Marshall Mathers LP. The Detroit emcee’s second offering was released on May 23, 2000, and sold over 1.76 million copies in its first week. This made the album the fastest selling solo studio album in the history of music. That record was held by Eminem up until Adele sold over 3 million copies of her third album 25 during its first week in 2015.

To celebrate the sixteenth anniversary of the MMLP, there are a number of limited-edition collector’s items being sold on Eminem’s website Eminem.com. One item up for sale is an authentic brick from the Detroit childhood home of Eminem, which was featured on the cover of both the MMLP album as well as the MMLP 2 record released in 2013. Another item for sale is a very limited quantity of dog tags which are made from re-purposed wood, that wood also taken from his childhood home. He is also re-issuing the MMLP album on cassette tape for all you hipsters out there who feel vinyl has gotten way too mainstream. I mean who think the sound quality of cassette tapes is so much superior to any other medium.

The Marshall Mathers LP had a number of highly successful singles released from it. The first single was “The Real Slim Shady”, a song known most for its lyrics attacking various popular culture celebrities as well as its comedic music video. The second single, “The Way I Am”, was a decidedly more serious that the first single. It was an anger filled track which lashed out against record execs and fans alike, who because of the success of his last album, had begun to become burdensome to the young rapper. The third single released from MMLP was “Stan”, the subject of this week’s edition of #tbt here on Clizbeats.

Eminem released “Stan” in December of 2000 as the third single from MMLP. The The song tells the story of a crazed and obsessed fan who writes a number of letters to the rapper, which get increasingly angry in tone when Eminem doesn’t respond to him. Then Stan records a tape of him as he is on his way to kill himself and his pregnant wife by driving a car off of a bridge. The final verse is Eminem responding to the fan by letter, trying to help him out with his problems, when he suddenly realizes that the fan he is writing is the same one who saw killed himself and his pregnant wife on the news. The song features a sample of the Dido song “Thank You” in its chorus, and Dido would go on to play the girlfriend of Stan in the music video. Eminem famously performed this song at the 2001 Grammy Awards where he was joined on stage by Elton John, who sang Dido’s chorus for the performance.

So with this week marking the sixteenth anniversary of the release of Eminem’s third studio record The Marshall Mathers LP, this week we remember the third single from that album “Stan”. Enjoy.

Eminem Featuring Dido 

“Stan”

From The Marshall Mathers LP

Shady/Aftermath/Interscope Records

“Stan” (Live) (Uncencored) 

From The 2001 Grammy Awards

The Recording Academy/CBS

 Related Media 

Dido 

“Thank You”

From No Angel 

Cheeky/Arista Records