Meet Marilyn Manson the Painter

Marilyn Manson will make his debut as a visual artist on September 19th, when he unveils more than forty watercolors at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Among the works are nudes, a portrait of a child with a gun, and an image of himself as Mickey Mouse.

"I've not gone out of my way to be offensive," says Manson. "They might expect me to have painted in my own shit or something."

Critics will be the judge of that. "They're a lot like Red Skelton's paintings," says David A. Greene, a critic for Dwell and England's Modern Painters magazine. "They all look like him."

Two paintings capture Manson's views of different stages of life. Of "Hand of Glory," a portrait of a young boy holding a doll, Manson says, "There is a fine line between being childish or holding onto your childish imagination in just the right way. This painting has a bit of that. It was never meant to be a portrait of myself but a symbol of the sadness of sometimes not being able to do what you want to do."

"When I Get Old" depicts an old man drinking from a cup. "The old bald man drinking the glass of absinthe is kind of inspired by William S. Burroughs and how I imagine myself to be when I am old," Manson says. "That's how I'd like to see myself if I live to be that age."

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Song Stories

“I'm Yours”

Jason Mraz | 2008

Jason Mraz re-emerged after his disappointing second album with this lead single, a Jack Johnson-esque ditty about giving yourself fully to someone else. The success of the reggae-tinged song (it earned two Grammy nods and a spot on the Billboard singles chart for well over a year) was something the folk-pop singer never predicted when he wrote it in 15 minutes at home. "I played a happy-hippie chord progression that would probably work without 50 different Bob Marley songs," he told Rolling Stone. "I thought, 'It's too novelty. This is a nursery rhyme,'" concluding that "you can never guess what's gonna be a hit."

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