Ok, so the thing that's always bothered me about "Racing in the Street" is that the narrator seems too self-aware for the kind of story Bruce is trying to tell. It seems like on the one hand Bruce wants to tell a story about a guy who's deluding himself into thinking that drag racing makes him cool and gives his life meaning, but on the other hand he wants to sing it like a dirge and really dwell on how miserable the guy's girlfriend is and how much of a toll his obsession is taking on her. And he's trying to do all that through a first-person song, so you end up with a narrator who's simultaneously clueless and self-aware. Does he really think that some guys just stop living, but not him, he goes racing in the street? Or is he hyper-aware that racing in the street is what's killing him?
Anyway, it occurred to me the other day that "Stan" tells roughly the same story - the guy who's compensating for the general hopelessness of his life by developing an increasingly unhealthy obsession, and the emotional toll it takes on his girlfriend, just updated for a time when people are more likely to get obsessed with celebrities than with drag racing. But where Bruce tries to tell it through a single voice, Eminem tells it through three voices, one of them a woman's, which I think is actually very effective.
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 19 September 2020 04:06 (three years ago) link