The English language needed a word for an obsessive fan, and Eminem delivered one in 2000 with "Stan," which was added to the Oxford American Dictionary in 2017, defined as "An overzealous or obsessive fan of a particular celebrity." It can be used as a noun ("He's a total stan for Beyoncé") or a verb ("When I was a teenager, I stanned Justin Bieber"). This song is listed as the origin of the word.
"Stan" - the song - tells the story of a fan obsessed with Eminem. When his letters are not answered, he gets more and more agitated until he finally snaps, putting his pregnant girlfriend in his trunk and driving off a bridge. The song ends with Eminem finally writing him back, but it's too late: As Eminem is finishing his letter, he realizes Stan was the man in the news story who drove off the bridge.
The song's hook is a sample of "
Thank You," a track from the British singer-songwriter Dido that first appeared in the 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow movie
Sliding Doors, then on her 1999 debut album,
No Angel. Dido's song is about the guy who turned her topsy turvy in love, helping her escape a long depression. "Stan" uses the entire first verse, including the very British opening line:
My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why
I got out of bed aloneDido gets out of her funk by seeing a picture of her guy and looking forward to seeing him again. Stan, though, has a picture of Eminem that keeps him going - a very unhealthy relationship.
Eminem talked about the character Stan in Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 Songs: "He's crazy for real, and he thinks I'm crazy, but I try to help him at the end of the song. It kinda shows the real side of me."
The song's producer, Mark "The 45" King, found the Dido song and incorporated the sample into the track. He played it for Eminem, who gave his stamp of approval, and they produced the song before asking permission. Dido got a letter out of the blue with a demo so she could hear how they used her song, and she was thrilled.
Dido enthusiastically granted permission, and because her sample is so important to the song, was given a songwriting credit along with her co-writer Paul Herman.
"Stan" was the third single from Eminem's second major-label album,
The Marshall Mathers LP, following "
The Real Slim Shady" and "
The Way I Am." He did indeed have some very fervent fans, the kind he rapped about in "The Real Slim Shady" who "dress like me, walk, talk and act like me." After "Stan," he had a lot more; the album sold over 10 million copies just in America.
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The music video stars Devon Sawa as Stan and Dido as his pregnant wife. We see him take on Eminem's look as his wife tries unsuccessfully to snap him into reality. He goes into his basement, a shrine to Eminem, and scribbles out his letters. The rest of the video plays out with the lyrics, as Stan drives off the bridge.
Eminem's mentor, Dr. Dre, directed the video along with Philip Atwell, who shot Eminem's "
My Name Is." The song runs 5:26, but the video is longer because of added dialogue, running 6:04. There's also an 8-minute version with additional scenes.
As for Devon Sawa, he really was a huge Eminem fan. He played the human version of Casper in the 1995 movie and was also in the 1999 film
Idle Hands.
Eminem performed this with Dido on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live on October 7, 2000. She also joined him on some of his tour dates.
Dido went up a few rungs of celebrity thanks to this song. She was a third-stage artist on the Lilith Fair in 1999 and was gradually making inroads with her album
No Angel, which had sold about 200,000 copies by the time it was used in "Stan" about 18 months after its release. She was signed to Arista Records, which helped her seize the opportunity. "Thank You" was released as a single and went to #3 in the US in April 2001. She went on a headline tour, made the rounds on talk shows, and watched as album sales took off, reaching 4 million in the US.
The "Stan" bump also broke her in her native UK, where the song was huge.
No Angel sold an amazing 3 million copies there to become the biggest debut by a solo female artist. Dido's next album, released in 2003, contained the hit "
White Flag" and sold well. After six years of touring, she stopped in 2005 and took it easy for a while, releasing an album every few years and also starting a family.
In his last letter, Stan writes how he is like the drowning man in the Phil Collins song "
In The Air Tonight." The rumor, which is not true, is that Collins saw a man watch another man drown, then sang the song to him at a concert to let him know he knew.
In America, "Stan" was just a modest hit, with a surprisingly low chart position of #51, in part because most radio stations didn't want a five-and-a-half minute song about a guy who drives his pregnant wife off a bridge on the air. But in the UK, which gave Eminem a lot more love early on, it was his second chart-topper, following "
The Real Slim Shady." He didn't top the American Hot 100 until 2002 with "
Lose Yourself."
Eminem performed this at the 2001 Grammys with Elton John playing piano and singing the Dido part. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) took umbrage, claiming Eminem promoted hatred with the line where Stan writes, "We could have been together" and Eminem replies, "That's the kind of thing that makes me think we shouldn't meet each other." Elton John didn't have a problem with it and came to Eminem's defense. The two became friends.
Eminem's Grammy performance with Elton John quickly became a very popular download on Napster, the file sharing service that toed a legal boundary. The producers of the Grammy Awards sued Napster in response, claiming they couldn't sell the performance as a single if everyone could just get it for free. The performance was eventually released as a single, with some of the proceeds going to charity.
Dido met Eminem for the first time the day before the video shoot, and got on quite well with the controversial rapper. "People confuse him with the characters in his songs," she told The Guardian. "It's like Stephen King. He does some scary s--t, and it's warped beyond belief. But it's not real. I got close enough to Eminem to know that he's not misogynist or homophobic."
The music video reveals the title character's name via his tombstone: Stanley Mitchell.
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Suggestion credit:
Brett - Edmonton, Canada
In this song, Stan says, "I drank a fifth of vodka, dare me to drive?" This line comes from Eminem's song "My Name Is."
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Suggestion credit:
Khnemu - Fayetteville, NC
At the end of the video, after Eminem realizes he is writing to the Stan who killed himself, lightning flashes and in the window beside him you can see Stan staring in at Eminem.
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Suggestion credit:
Lex - Dayton, OH
The song structure and storyline of "Stan" seems to be based on "Fans" by Malcolm McLaren from 1984, which includes an opera aria excerpt instead of a Dido song and tells the tale of an obsessed fan with spoken word rather than a rap.
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Suggestion credit:
Jim - Oklahoma City, OK
Dido's first child was born at the private Portman Hospital in London in July 2011. So why are we telling you this? Because she named him Stanley.
The Guardian asked the singer if it was in tribute to this track, which kickstarted her career. Dido said it wasn't, it just happened to have always been her favorite name. She added: "I don't mind people thinking that anyway because it was such a great period in my life."
Eminem revisited this song on the
Marshall Mathers LP 2 track "
Bad Guy," where Stan's vengeful little brother, Matthew, kidnaps the rapper in retaliation for destroying his sibling's life.
The original version of the third verse was deleted because the engineer was stoned. "When we recorded 'Stan' I worked with a couple different engineers but this particular engineer I had never worked with before," Eminem wrote on Genius. "While we were recording the third verse of 'Stan,' he started rolling a joint and asked me if I minded if he smoked while we cut. What was I gonna do? Say no? He was already rolling it so I told him 'no problem.'"
"Back then we were recording on 2-inch tape, so once you recorded over something it's gone forever," he continued. "So I'm in the booth waiting and he backs the tape up all the way to the beginning of the verse and punches me in. I realize he's in the wrong spot and I can't hear any of my vocals so I start waving my arms and yelling in the mic to try to get his attention. He doesn't notice so I run into the control room through a cloud of smoke and yell 'Yo, I wanted to keep those vocals' he just looked at me and said 'My bad man... you wanna hit this?' The first half of the verse was GONE. I re-recorded it but you should have heard the original take that s--t was WAY better... oh well!"
On December 5, 2020,
Saturday Night Live spoofed this song in a skit where a basement-dweller named "Stu" (played by Pete Davidson) writes increasingly disturbing letters to Santa asking for a Playstation 5. At the end of the skit, Eminem appears on Christmas morning unwrapping a PS5.
It took a while for Eminem to realize he was famous. Even after his first major-label album,
The Slim Shady LP, took off, he was surprised when fans adulated him. These interactions led to this song.
"I wasn't sure before then if this was a one-time thing, but I had people knocking on the door and I realized that it was getting crazy," he told
XXL. "It inspired songs like 'Stan' because to have fans is a dream come true, but it's also so bizarre and so surreal."