7 December 2002
‘Lose Yourself’ is Eminem’s second Irish Christmas number one in just three years. I like to think of nostalgic Irish families tucking into Christmas dinner, then gathering around the festive fireplace, all to the seasonal good cheer of this and ‘Stan’ plus a few slur-laden bars of ‘Fairytale Of New York’. Peace on earth, good will to all.
You probably also listen to ‘Lose Yourself’ in the car on Saturday mornings while ferrying your offspring to their sports training, duly psyching them up to win at all costs and not embarrass you on the field of combat. Of course, they’re already embarrassed by you, not least because you listen to Eminem. Granted, ‘Lose Yourself’ hasn’t the nasty, cartoonish frat-boy antics of ‘The Real Slim Shady’ and ‘Without Me’, and thankfully he parks the homophobia and misogyny for at least one track. No, it’s bad in a completely different way: over-the-top melodrama where a pre-gig white rapper tries to pump himself up not to be terrible and ridiculed. Hasn’t he tried just being a better rapper? Or giving the whole rap thing a miss altogether, since he’s clearly so useless at it? There’s a whole cohort of top-level sportspeople who actually use this overheated laughing gas as their personal in-the-zone process cue or walk-on music, which makes me worry about the prevalence of concussion injuries. Happy Christmas 2002!
