Songoftheday 2/2/24 - These ideas are nightmares to white parents, whose worst fear is a child with dyed hair and who likes earrings...
"Sing For The Moment" - Eminem
from the album The Eminem Show (2002)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #14 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10
Today's song comes from Eminem, whose Eminem Show album had already spun three big hits with "Without Me", "Cleaning Out My Closet", and "Superman". He also in the midst of this had the biggest success of his career with "Lose Yourself" from his movie 8 Mile. The fourth single from the Show album was "Sing For The Moment", which interpolates the rock classic "Dream On" by Aerosmith, giving Steven Tyler writing credit along with the rapper and producer Jeff Bass. The record samples Tyler singing part of the chorus, giving the new song its name, while Aerosmith's guitarist, Joe Perry, recorded a new solo for the single. The lyrics have Eminem swerving back from the silliness of "Superman" into the "serious guy" mode of "Lose Yourself", but this time with the anger of "Cleaning Out My Closet". In it Mathers recounts the trials of a young white boy who is into rap music and whose absent father and abusive stepfather cuts quite close to the narrative Eminem had revealed already. He pulls up grudges with critics of his violent and at times homophobic style (well...) as well as the "law" blaming the genre on the violence in the urban community. All this while he's summoning an army of suburban brats like a snotty Pied Piper, even name checking a guy he assaulted for supposedly macking on his ex-wife. But as opposed to "Superman", this was more fully produced, and with the rock icons anchoring the record pop radio was fully on board....
"Sing For The Moment" became the fourth song from The Eminem Show to reach the top-40 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 in May of 2003, while hitting #18 on their Rap Singles chart. On the radio, the song peaked at #5 on the Mainstream Top-40 airplay list. Internationally, the song topped the Portuguese chart, reached the top ten in Canada (#2 Sales), Ireland (#3), Denmark (#4), Germany (#5), Italy (#5), Australia (#5), New Zealand (#5), Finland (#5), the United Kingdom (#6), Belgium (#6 Flanders/#15 Wallonia), Austria (#7), the Netherlands (#8), Switzerland (#8), and Norway (#10). It also hit the top-40 in Sweden (#11), Romania (#11), and Spain (#17).
The fifth "official" single from the album, "Business", wasn't heavily promoted, but still got to #77 on Billboard's R&B Songs chart. Album track "My Dad's Gone Crazy", featuring his daughter Hailie Jade, also popped on to the R&B Songs list at #64, while his "Hailie's Song" "bubbled under" the Hot 100 at #113.
Eminem will be back to the series many more times.
(6/10)
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In 2022, when the rapper was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he brought in Aerosmith to perform a mash up of "Dream On" and "Sing For The Moment"...
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