Marilyn Manson is a musician who leads the eponymous rock band. He is regarded as a controversial figure in the genre due to his past shocking antics on the stage and in real life, not to mention the lyrics of his songs that targeted religion and other controversial issues. Regardless, Manson has amassed a large number of fans worldwide with critically-acclaimed and chart-topping albums.
Let’s take a look at Marilyn Manson’s rise to fame and his whereabouts in 2024
Marilyn Manson’s Early Life
Manson and his family relocated to Florida afterwards. He took a journalism degree at Broward College and, after graduating, became a staff writer for the lifestyle magazine 25th Parallel. At the same time Manson was setting up the foundation for his own band named Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids. The interviews he did with some well-known names in the music industry (for the articles Manson wrote) helped in establishing connections. Manson derived his name from the combination of Marilyn Monroe and notorious criminal Charles Manson.
The band began recording demo tapes in the early 90s which received much airplay thanks to the radio station WYNX-FM. Their efforts eventually paid off when Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor agreed to sign the band to his record label Nothing Records. 1994 saw the release of the band’s first album Portrait of an American Family which did well commercially despite lukewarm critical reception. The band steadily gained both fans and notoriety due to their highly controversial stage antics.
Marilyn Manson on Fire
Manson attempted a different genre in his 1998 album Mechanical Animals by exchanging heavy metal with electronic and glam rock. For this album Manson took on the identity of a glam-rocker extraterrestrial named Omega much like David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. The reviews were favorable but many fans of the band’s earlier work were not very receptive of their foray in a different genre. Mechanical Animals initially suffered from low sales but later on it managed to become certified Platinum.
The band came back to their original tunes in 2000 with Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death). It served as the first part of a trilogy of albums with the previous two releases being the second and third parts respectively. The album was also Manson’s counterattack to the extensive finger-pointing he endured as being among the main influences of the Columbine shooting last year. Holy Wood took years before selling well, but the reviews were at least generally positive. The slow initial sales were due to doubts on the band because of their previous album.
Throughout the 2000s Manson released three albums namely The Golden Age of Grotesque (2003), Eat Me, Drink Me (2007), and The High End of Low (2009). The three albums all received mixed critical reviews but with commendable commercial performance. In 2009 the band parted ways with Interscope Records, the record label they’ve been with since the first album along with Nothing, due to Manson’s claims of artistic censorship.
For their eighth studio album, Manson collaborated with actor-director Shia LaBeouf for the production of a short film titled Born Villain in 2011. LaBeouf also released Campaign, a coffee table book containing images he and his girlfriend Karolyn Pho took during a night out with Manson in Los Angeles. The band struck a deal with a record company in the United Kingdom named Cooking Vinyl and they were given full creative control. The album Born Villain hit the shelves the following year, hitting the top spot of many charts worldwide and satisfying the ears of many critics.
In 2015 Manson released The Pale Emperor where the band mixed alternative and blues rock along with their usual hard rock and gothic metal. Manson dedicated this album in memory of his mother Barbara Warner who passed away in 2014. The album was welcomed by critics with positive marks and has been included in numerous “best album” lists during that year.
Marilyn Manson’s Acting Ventures
Aside from his career in music, Manson has also made appearances in numerous films and television shows. His debut was in the 1997 thriller Lost Highway, followed by Jawbreaker, Party Monster, and The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things.
His debut in TV was in the 2010 comedy series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and later on in Californicaton, Eastbound & Down, Once Upon a Time, and Sons of Anarchy.
In 2004 Manson ventured into the realm of directing with a planned horror film titled Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll. Manson is also set to star as the lead character Lewis Carroll. So far the script and design were both completed with a distributor to boot, but production has not yet started. There have been reports of the production being postponed but Manson himself posted an updated on his Facebook profile stating that work has already begun. However in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) thread, Manson stated that he didn’t want to push through with the film anymore as it was damaging his psyche.
What’s Marilyn Manson Doing Now In 2024 – Recent Updates
Marilyn Manson recently released his eleventh studio album We Are Chaos on September 11, 2020. His first full-length release in three years (his last album Heaven Upside Down came out in 2017), it consisted of ten tracks including “Don’t Chase the Dead”, “Red Black and Blue”, “Paint You With My Love”, “Keep My Head Together”, “Broken Needle”, and “Infinite Darkness.”
A commercial success, it charted at number eight on the US Billboard 200 Music Chart and was the highest-selling album of the week based on sales. Not only that but it also entered the UK Albums Chart at number seven with over 4,600 first-week sales.
In 2019, he also co-headlined the Twins of Evil: Hell Never Dies Tour with rock band Rob Zombie. A sequel to the 2018 “Twins of Evil: The Second Coming Tour”, it started on July 9, 2019, and ended on August 18, 2019, after 24 shows.
That’s not all, he’s also made a number of television appearances over the past few years. In 2020, he guest starred as himself in the HBO drama series The New Pope. That same year, he provided the voices for The Smiley Men in the superhero horror film The New Mutants, which starred Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Alice Braga.
And more recently in 2021, he made a guest appearance in the Starz fantasy drama American Gods. He also appeared in the documentaries Biography: The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne and The New Pope Backstage.
According to IMDb, he will also be appearing in the documentary Johnny’s Inferno, which is currently filming.
For more up-to-date news on the singer, you can follow him on Instagram at @marilynmanson. He also tweets occasionally on Twitter under the same handle @marilynmanson.
