has there ever been a good eminem CHORUS?

dude raps his ass off but steadily has some of the weakest choruses in the history of rap.

"Forgot About DRE" is maybe his one inarguably dope chorus, but it's not on his album.

"Kim"
"Lose Yourself"
"My Dad's Gone Crazy"

to name three

will stan for "stan" , flipping the breathy lovesong into stalker ish with a beat behind it works well imo

& nothing wrong with "my name is"

hate "lose yourself" hook, sounds horribly forced like most hype things he tries

it takes about two listens for even the dullest most distracted listener to be able to sing along with the entirety of the "lose yourself" chorus; therefore, it is an excellent pop song chorus

I would say "My Name Is," yeah. But then the debate becomes "has em ever had a good chorus beyond his first single"

And "Lose Yourself" was def his "born in the USA" moment donuts def hard to look at that overblown chorus objectively at this point

Donuts = "so it's"

Lol phone

"Sing for the Moment," "White America," "Amityville"?

"Love The Way You Lie" is fantastic.

lol j/k but it does make me want to hear "Airplanes"

Mentally ill from Amityville! / Accidentally kill your family still! / Thinking he won't? God damnit he will! / Mentally ill from Amityville!

Sing for the moment, gtfo of this thread mordy!!!

"any man" /cheating

Cause any man who would jump in front of a minivan
for twenty grand and a bottle of pain pills and a minithin
is fuckin crazy -- you hear me? Ha?
Is fuckin crazy -- hello, hi!
Cause any man who would jump in front of a minivan
for twenty grand and a bottle of pain pills and a minithin
is fuckin crazy -- do you hear me?
Is fuckin crazy

Sing for the Moment is great! I love how angry he gets in the verse right before it segues into the Aerosmith chorus. Awesome times.

Yeah, I was surprised when "lose yourself" became his defining moment of superstardom as the whole thing seemed really hokey and as you said forced, with a dated "live your dream! be the best you that you can be!" message. Then, there's something to be said for the time and place and context of a song.

The way he has it set up it turns the chorus into this "living well is the best revenge" thing where everything sucks but he's going to show all the h8ers by living in the moment. Love it.

"just don't give a fuck"!

i think "the way i am" is a dope chorus, like the only one of "those" eminem songs with a tolerable hook

"just don't give a fuck"!

― swvl, Sunday, June 20, 2010 1:07 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i didn't like "lose yourself" when it came out and totally understand finding it corny but it makes a load of sense, esp the chorus, if you imagine you're an athlete pumping yourself up.

i think "the way i am" is a dope chorus, like the only one of "those" eminem songs with a tolerable hook

― geremi crossed the ball today (J0rdan S.), Sunday, June 20, 2010 2:12 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

nah fuck that angry dr. seuss shit

gotta say i don't LOVE "The Real Slim Shady" or "Without Me"'s choruses but it's odd to me that they're practically his only major singles that haven't been mentioned, i think they work pretty well for what they are.

still, it's fucked that Eminem is pretty much the only A-list rapper of the last decade with the clout or confidence to do a lot of his own beats & hooks and is pretty much inept at both.

nah fuck that angry dr. seuss shit

― fantast (ico) (some dude), Sunday, June 20, 2010 11:41 AM Bookmark

it's rakim, you fucker

his choruses always have cool melodies but terrible lyrics eg. "suck my dick", or he tries to cram too much information into a short hook and ends up awkwardly repeating words eg "mushrooms" (which is a pretty great chorus actually)

???

totally wack chorus xpost

"purple pills" is pretty great -- but i can't remember any of the words other than the song title itself

oh yeah, "purple pills" def belongs in this thread

xp: "it's the r, the a, to the k-i-m/ if i wasn't, then why would i say i am"

yeah "purple pills" is a classic

yah dude i know the rakim

purple pills is cheating tho

guess "my band" would be cheating too

oned, i think they work pretty well for what they are.

still, it's fucked that Eminem is pretty much the only A-list rapper of the last decade with the clout or confidence to do a lot of his own beats & hooks and is pretty much inept at both.

given his success on the charts I think "inept" is a weird thing to say - the function of a hook is to rope in enough listeners/buyers to make you successful; you write good hooks if you sell an assload of records, full stop, you know? unless you wanna argue that the listening public is responding to "hype" or something in which case the indie thread is over thataway

rakim's version doesn't rhyme "i say i am" with "i say i am" and isn't wack

shit i meant "my fault" not "mushrooms"

ok scratch "inept" but "not nearly as talented in those departments as he is in rapping," which is also true of guys like Jay-Z or whoever that have a good ear for finding producers and collaborators that DO make great beats/hooks

yeah but that's kind of the smarty-pants thing about the eminem chorus - the verb "say" functions differently in either clause, so it feels like a rhyme because of what's going on grammatically, how the two "say"s are almost different words - which is why nerds (like ys truly mind, lol) are always impressed by eminem: there's something almost scholarly going on in the way he's working

xpost

you write good hooks if you sell an assload of records, full stop, you know? unless you wanna argue that the listening public is responding to "hype" or something in which case the indie thread is over thataway

btw this is crazy strawman horseshit. lots of popular artists are bad at writing hooks, and either have other strengths or have other people write their hooks.

imo the public responds to hooks, that's what sells records/makes chart positions, and your post contains the most egregious misuse of the term "strawman" in recent history

like an "unless...in which case" clause is only strawmanning if you can't read/parse sentences

you throw "indie" into the convo for no reason, i raise you a "strawman," that's how it works.

lol fair enough

God that one song "drugs really got a hold of me" or whatever is the fucking WORST of pre-EminemShow em

xp but my point stands imo, people buy records because they love the hooks, I think you've got a lot of heavy lifting to do if you wanna argue otherwise

would you not have been this pedantic if i'd said "choruses" instead of "hooks"? the whole thread's premise, which I did not start and which not that many people have strongly disagreed with, is that Eminem is not great at writing choruses but suddenly I phrase it one particular way and I'm indie rock dude accusing the 50 million Eminem fans of being wrong.

for aero an effective chorus is a good chorus, but i think most ppl want a little more than effective

how can we have such a pedantic argument without deej being involved? maybe we could take some sort of break while i try and get him on the phone

*plz hld the thread*

let's be fair to deej, pedantry is the national language around here

some dude I am sorry for invoking the indie demon no slight intended, didn't realize it was gonna be that a huge goad in yr side ok - but, like, the function of a chorus is to provide a good hook - but yeah, zvookster otm, a good chorus has a job to do, that job is to inject the hook, some choruses are better than others but "macarena" is a gold standard whether you dig it or no - but me being a guy who can reasonably be tarred w/the indie brush to a greater or larger extent, it does seem to me an indie-ish argt to criticise hooks about which the public has spoken: you either need to explicitly state what's wrong w/the hook or concede to the people who got hooked by it

this is fertile ground for some pretty deep discussion imo, "good" chorus vs. "successful" chorus - for example, "You Light Up My Life" strikes me as shitful in the extreme, can't say what I hate about it but it rankles badly, but at the same time I'd guess that it's 25+ years since I last heard it and I can still sing the whole damn thing, which makes it a winning/good chorus insofar as it wins out over choruses I'd call "better" & have listened to more times ("Desecration of Souls" say) but which are harder to recall all aspects of readily

xpost

let's be fair to deej, pedantry is the national language around here

lol A+

for aero an effective chorus is a good chorus, but i think most ppl want a little more than effective

― quick fast like Rommedahl (zvookster), Sunday, June 20, 2010 3:50 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this really sums up how i feel. i think a truly GREAT chorus is a delicate science, but sometimes if all the other pieces are in place all you need is something repetitive enough to stick in peoples' heads and you've got a hit. i don't think it makes me an indie warrior or someone with a dim view of humanity to suggest that not every smash hit song in the history of pop music has a good chorus.

this is fertile ground for some pretty deep discussion imo

more like well fertilized ground.

lol stfu da croupier

hahaha

but I mean some dude, look, part of the whole indie stance was "just cause nobody really wants to hear our choruses or how we sing them doesn't mean they're not really good" - Pavement are kind of the standard-bearers for this: the general public was never going to respond to those choruses, because the words were opaque & the delivery was stilted, but if you write songs, you hear a Pavement chorus sometimes and go "wow, that's smart & good, that's a great chorus" - but "good" and "popular" can end up at odds pretty quickly in this kind of discussion, and if you want to make an argument that "good" and "popular" occupy competing spheres, then I'm sorry that you're keeping company with ppl you hate (lol welcome to the club), but that's Indie 101 imo

you are the only one who has set up a dichotomy between "good" and "popular" here, jd

no the Rev I don't think that's true! some dude is arguing that Eminem's hooks/choruses suck, but his singles chart like crazy

and I'm saying: if a single charts, it's because of the chorus, I have yet to hear any convincing argt against that proposition, it's kind of asked-and-answered imo

quick sing clay aiken's #1 hit

I have never heard a clay aiken song afaik

so ppl itt can't divide hit choruses into effective but sucky & effective and dope?

no the Rev I don't think that's true! some dude is arguing that Eminem's hooks/choruses suck, but his singles chart like crazy

― get your bucket of free wings (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, June 20, Suggest Ban Permalink
2010 1:10 PM Bookmark

right, but he isn't arguing for any correlation between these two things

i mean yeah in general songs that are hits are liked by the people who like them, but cultural warhorses like american idols and elvises tend to get some leeway, and if you really feel that commercial success negates critical discussion of a song's quality then why on earth are you here (unless it's really about pedantic arguments about choruses vs. hooks or good vs. successful).

I think if someone's going to call out a guy for his hooks, and the hooks are massively successful, then some technical explanation of what's bad about them is in order, or else the critique is kinda questionable

which is nothing like "ommercial success negates critical discussion of a song's quality" imo, just "his hooks are bad" - really? since millions seem to think they're good, some further explication of why they're bad doesn't seem like a strange thing to call for

sometimes the "hook" isn't on the track, esp for past-prime elvis types

croup otm; careerist artists be havin hits based on their legacy and not the actual songs themselves

and if you want to make an argument that "good" and "popular" occupy competing spheres, then I'm sorry that you're keeping company with ppl you hate

yeah i never said anything of the kind, stop tripping

this "well his success seems to suggest ALL his choruses are good!" thing should really be saved for a Diane Warren thread.

doesn't seem hard to imagine someone else using eminem's hooks and not charting - OTOH I think there is some minimum bar of catchiness that you have to hit to get on the radio

anyway, i'm the one in this thread that repped for the chorus of "The Real Slim Shady," which probably more than any other one song is what sold Eminem millions upon millions of records. and i don't think it takes a people-hating conspiracy theorist to suggest that some of his later hits have less good choruses but got on the radio anyway thanks to more than a little bit of career momentum.

yeah I would just kind of like to hear some substantive critique against for example the singles Alfred cites in the first response on this thread - like the words "hokey" and "forced" are invoked early on, but those seem like the sorts of terms you could throw at any chorus you don't like: it's in the nature of a chorus to feel a little too-obvious, that is how they succeed

xpost yeah career momentum to a certain extent but I think arguing against "lose yourself," say, takes some formal critique along lines that most people are pretty reluctant to bust - it's catchy as fuck, a million people loved it, "obvious" or "hokey" are terms that require some unpacking imo

i mean "Cleaning Out My Closet" is a turgid unforgiving song, but it was a hit because it was the 2nd single off an album with huge initial sales and it was an 'interesting personal song' from a guy who had already long since made the world obsessed with his personal problems.

i'm not knocking "Lose Yourself" personally, that's one of my favorites and imo one of his better choruses, corny as it is.

trying to imagine a single person hearing em's #1 hits "crack a bottle" and "Not Afraid" on the radio, said "SAY now THAT'S a hook I dig!" and hanging around to hear the artist's name so they can rush to iTunes when they get home.

see I would say "cleaning out my closet" was successful because however long it's been since it came out I still remember - as a guy who never owned it in any format - that the chorus starts "I'm sorry MAMA!!!" that's a hook; it sticks; that's a good chorus.

^ has a deep, abiding respect for whoever wrote about the man from nantucket

in fact I do!!!

I'm gonna echo J0hn on "Cleaning out My Closet." Song has a monster hook that has not ever left my head since its release.

poor guy!

totally would have sought trepanation by the third year

anyhow, i think we've established that indie-born career musicians have a respect for consistent sellers that indie-born career critics don't so we can probably move on.

there are hundreds or thousands of songs that i will be able to remember for the rest of my life -- can't imagine liking them all, or considering their ability to get stuck in my head as an inherent measure of 'success' other than in the most basic and cynical way.

Another example of this is how I rapped the whole of "Gangasta's Paradise" in my head twenty times yesterday.

there are hundreds or thousands of songs that i will be able to remember for the rest of my life -- can't imagine liking them all, or considering their ability to get stuck in my head as an inherent measure of 'success' other than in the most basic and cynical way.

yeah I mean fair enough, but I'd think you'd wanna define your terms then in re: what makes a chorus/hook "good," whether career momentum can 100% push a song with a shitty chorus into the top ten and leave it there, etc

anyhow, i think we've established that indie-born career musicians have a respect for consistent sellers that indie-born career critics don't so we can probably move on.

100% completely constitutionally incapable of not dragging my day job into a discussion where we disagree, eh, Anthony? seriously dude: that is assholism & I wish you'd grow out of it

Which is not a quality judgement of either (referring to "Cleaning Out My Closet" and "Gangsta's Paradise"), I am just astounded at how certain hooks bury themselves in you and never, ever leave. Which makes them good on some aesthetic scale, I think.

so xposted.

Like I can't tell you how many times I've had "Cleaning in My Closet" in my head during a test and inadvertently written the chorus in the essay portion.

100% completely constitutionally incapable of not dragging my day job into a discussion where we disagree, eh, Anthony? seriously dude: that is assholism & I wish you'd grow out of it

I dragged EVERYBODY'S day job into the discussion, stop being so sensitive about this shit and I still think its valid observation

well, naturally you do, it's your default hole card

"Butler believed that gender was drag, heteronormativity a copy for which there is no original, and I'm sorry mama, I never meant to hurt you."

i know you get your back up about this shit, aerosmith, but if a dc dude was telling us about how ya gotta give it up for anyone whose been in the house of reps for 30 years I'd probably say something similar. and it wasn't like I made a value judgment, just noted why people may be coming at this silly, pedantic argument from different sides. sorry if that strikes you as a low blow or whatever.

the reason it strikes me as ridiculous is your sample set of "career musicians" here is 1: the comment only exists to infer that one participant in the discussion has an unvoiced bias, which is bullshit here as it usually is - it's a tactic you resort to routinely here, and it's as insulting and unnecessary now as it has been every time you've pulled it. the argument is only silly if you're not interested in it, in which case, nobody's forcing you to read or post.

he comment only exists to infer that one participant in the discussion has an unvoiced bias, which is bullshit here as it usually is

again, i never said "career musicians" have any more bias than "career critics" - actually made a point of noting how everyone's got a role in this, sorry if you keep missing this

your sample set of "career musicians" here is 1

reposted for emphasis

and what's the number of critics i'm referring to here, 3?

I heard "Renegade" an hour ago and, yeah, this thread can go to fucking hell.

3 is a group however small - 1 is a completely ungeneralizable sample

w/e, go on back to saying how hooks or choruses are good or bad without in any way defining any of your terms

100% completely constitutionally incapable of not dragging my day job into a discussion where we disagree, eh, Anthony?

Before anyone freaks out and complains, I deleted the "calling a dude out by their real name when shit gets heated" thread on ILTMI.

i think yr regard for the craft and achievement of it is relevant tho aero, & i don't think listeners only have an onus to share that regard. but if u don't want it brought up, it's fairly easy not to bring it up and i guess it shouldn't be.

apparently he's more upset about my assumptions about other career musicians, why else would it matter that I used an ungeneralizable sample when cracking a joke at everyone's expense

wow you guys turned my perfectly good thread into pedantic nonsense and retarded bickering within a few hours, kudos

to me the "the way i am" hook is whiny, overwrought & petulant when it's meant to be hard, forceful and convincing. this is partly a product of its addressing the supposed drama of eminem's public persona - eminem's being a somewhat controversial celebrity just doesn't hold up a "me against the world" scenario. but all-importantly it comes out in the delivery itself, which is a non-intellectual thing. it hits the ear as clunky, with all the awkward self-righteousness of yr vag egocentric over-earnest spoiled teenager.

the tried and tested underground trope "radio won't even play my jam" comes off instead as entitled corporate bitching, as well as an afterthought.

"LOOOOSE yourself in the MOOOOment you gotta HOLD it do NOT let it GOOOOO" is more defensible but memorable like nails knocked into yr skull would be "memorable".

tbh aero if u just came at specific ppl without pre-empting six diff arguments nobody made in yr posts u might get clearer justifications.

"LOOOOSE yourself in the MOOOOment you gotta HOLD it do NOT let it GOOOOO" is more defensible but memorable like nails knocked into yr skull would be "memorable".

why do you think they call them "hooks"?
http://www.handmadefishhooks.com/images/home/hand_held_hook_shadow.jpg

tbh aero if u just came at specific ppl without pre-empting six diff arguments nobody made in yr posts u might get clearer justifications.

no, da croupier would haul out the same "but you are a musician" argt even if I was just posting random strings of numbers

wow, and i thought bradnelson had it bad with that eminem song stuck in his head for seven years straight

also note that i've never blamed your day job for the general don quixote-tude zvooskter mentions above

There is no sign of my affliction ever ending, either!

I believe I was conversing mainly w/some dude til you swung in w/yr tried-and-true "critique," A

"Do you remember that you are in an indie rock band? Are you sure you remember?"

altho given that you seem to have zero insight into the fact that this is something you do reliably, predictably, and with me as the specific target, it's hard to imagine that there's any value in me trying to point it out to you

haha actually i'm surprised i don't tell some ilxors "whatevs, you're a drummer" more often

lol fair enuf

anyhow, i think we've established that indie-born career musicians have a respect for consistent sellers that indie-born career critics don't so we can probably move on.

100% completely constitutionally incapable of not dragging my day job into a discussion where we disagree, eh, Anthony? seriously dude: that is assholism & I wish you'd grow out of it

― get your bucket of free wings (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, June 20, 2010 4:42 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fyi you were pretty much begging to get that thrown at you when you introduced the word "indie" into a thread where it hadn't existed and had no need to be uttered

naw dude I'm begging to get that thrown at me by typing into ilx at any time when da croupier is awake

the function of a hook is to rope in enough listeners/buyers to make you successful

― get your bucket of free wings (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, June 20, 2010 3:37 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and I still think this is a more cynical and reductive statement about pop music and choruses than anything I've said in this thread.

that could be, but my hook.jpg is for real - you think it's called a hook for nothing? pop music is commerce and art, that's part of its pleasure, they're called "hooks" because they lodge in the listener's skin and draw them in (and they're called "choruses" because they are sung by groups of people)

if you guys had just used the word "refrain" I would have had no ammo at all but no you couldn't be happy with a nice french word

in hip hop, "hook" is used interchangeably with "chorus" or "refrain," and that's how I was using it, and how I clarified my usage earlier upthread. and afaict is the only reason I was singled out for this argument instead of the dozen other people who don't seem to disagree with this thread's premise. so yeah, fuck it, have fun with your ammo.

actually you were singled out because your arguments seem less inane than "yeah these are bad! lol how bad they are!" & you know your shit around this stuff so I'd think you'd be able to explain in greater detail why a given hook/chorus/refrain is "bad" outside of the nonthinking unexamined garbage that tends to pass for analysis when it comes to mega-selling rap artists, on whom knee-jerk player-hating is the dull & boring (and, yes, indie-resembling) rule

the line about ammo was a joke

well, to give at least a nugget of serious analysis, i would say that Eminem is an example of a rapper whose choruses are often as wordy and syllable packed as his verses, and that approach imo has a high risk/reward axis -- sometimes there's a strong concept and a naggingly catchy cadence so it works really well (imo "The Real Slim Shady" being a good example), sometimes it gets really babbly and overcooked (a lot of his non-singles and lesser hits), sometimes he makes the rhyme scheme simpler or more repetitive and the effect is more annoying or deadening than any of the above (which is where I'm at with "The Way I Am"). and then you've got his really ill-advised attempts at sing-song refrains on more recent singles like "Beautiful" and "Not Afraid" that are frankly horrifying.

yeah I can see how you'd think that - you cf. Jay-Z upthread but for me actually I like that Eminem doesn't insist on his choruses sort of "lowering the tone" for lack of a better term: he's a guy in love with phrases, sentences, he's the conjunction junction dude from Schoolhouse Rock, and his choruses don't disown that. it also makes him kind of special; am I wrong in thinking there are plenty of artists who farm out the hook-writing, probably for the betterment of their chart positions but at the expense of their personalities? whereas Jay-Z, it seems clear that for his hooks, he's more cynical than me and Eminem put together: that's the moment at which he's going to really start drawing the higher paycheck, and so he rises to the occasion by no longer asking as much of your ear.

I have never heard "Beautiful" or "So Afraid" because when it became apparent that dude had fallen off completely I stopped bothering to check his stuff out

appreciate the analysis btw & find it solid

mega-selling rap artists, on whom knee-jerk player-hating is the dull & boring (and, yes, indie-resembling) rule

surprised u find this on ilx, i don't

I like the chorus on "Square Dance".

every time i write a rhyme
these ppl think it's a crime
to tell em what's on my mind
i don't gotta say a word
i just flip em the bird
and keep movin i don't take shit from no one
i'm a criminal

or

I never meant to give you mushrooms girl
I never meant to bring you to my world
Now you sitting in the corner crying
And now it's my fault my fault

yeah I can see how you'd think that - you cf. Jay-Z upthread but for me actually I like that Eminem doesn't insist on his choruses sort of "lowering the tone" for lack of a better term: he's a guy in love with phrases, sentences, he's the conjunction junction dude from Schoolhouse Rock, and his choruses don't disown that. it also makes him kind of special; am I wrong in thinking there are plenty of artists who farm out the hook-writing, probably for the betterment of their chart positions but at the expense of their personalities? whereas Jay-Z, it seems clear that for his hooks, he's more cynical than me and Eminem put together: that's the moment at which he's going to really start drawing the higher paycheck, and so he rises to the occasion by no longer asking as much of your ear.

I have never heard "Beautiful" or "So Afraid" because when it became apparent that dude had fallen off completely I stopped bothering to check his stuff out

― get your bucket of free wings (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, June 20, 2010 7:28 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this really just gets to the base of my initial comment and my main issue w/ Eminem -- to me the best rap stars engage in the world/industry their success thrusts them into and lets it effect their music without losing their own sound or identity, and he did that to some extent, but i kind of feel like once he got the Dre cosign and became a big deal, he really just stayed in his clubhouse and made big budget versions of what he would've made as just another white midwestern shock rapper who happens to have above average skills. which I can respect to some extent, but for the most part have zero desire to listen to. that's why it's so depressing that, after years of barely ever interacting with the mainstream rap world outside of the Aftermath roster, now he's coming off his high horse to do songs with Drake and B.o.B. of all people.

Eminem=Mansion Backpacker

maybe post-recovery can reach a benign enough status where he can shake hands with obama while mumbling about how jay-z promotes drug use.

The contrast between his hardass rap and the lame chorus on Not Afraid is the most jarring thing I've heard since ODB dropped that verse on the Mariah song, except the latter was funny and ultimately kind of awesome.

Isn't Dr. Dre responsible for the beats and things? I have a hard time visualizing Eminem busting out frooty loops on his Dell.

yes, Dr Dre has produced every single Eminem song ever