1996Released
3:38

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about The Beautiful People. By Songfacts®.

This song is a description of the way you need to survive in capitalistic society. It deals with Manson's personal struggle of being a wormboy (or middle class loser) to being a famous rock star. He's making a link between the American media and Nazi propaganda, as well as the need to to be physically perfect because of the hyper-reality we are brainwashed by. It's also about the rock star looking down on the worms that make him what he is - this need to be more then a worm is what made him a star. The average rebel can relate to the song because Manson is making ugly fashionable, which is easier to achieve than the perfection we see on other CD covers and on MTV.

The phrase "The Beautiful People" came into vogue in the '60s, entering the popular lexicon in 1967. That year, a book by Marilyn Bender called The Beautiful People: a Candid Examination of a Cultural Phenomenon - the Marriage of Fashion and Society in the '60s was published, which is where Manson got the title to this song. The phrase quickly became used as a demeaning identifier, as any grounded individual would certainly object to being classified a "beautiful person." The Beatles used it incisively in their song "Baby You're A Rich Man," and many journalists picked up the phrase. We found this from a 1967 NME article on Dave Davies of The Kinks, where the author responds to a comment from Davies that he likes to stare at the moon and let his mind wander: "Before anyone reads into that remark that Dave has joined the beautiful people perhaps I should mention that his version of a 'beautiful person' is someone who plays football."

Manson wrote this song with his guitarist, Twiggy Ramirez.

Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of The Beautiful People.
C♯Key
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
144BPM

Album

The album The Beautiful People is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released The Beautiful People.
Universal Music Ltd.
(C) 1996 Interscope Records
(P) 1996 Interscope Records

See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.

Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.

5.8MArtists
73.5MSongs
12.3MAlbums
6.3KGenres
2.5MLabels
493KPlaylists