"The Dope Show"

Marilyn Manson
(nothing/Interscope, 1999)

The best T-Rex song of the decade, and though Manson's core teenage demographic doesn't see it this way, the bored-and-bitchy disillusioned starlet half of his persona is a hell of a lot more compelling than the serial-killer Antichrist shtick. This song was part of the conceptual Ziggy Stardust half of Mechanical Animals, but Manson comes on less like an interstellar decadent than like a cynical, faded, half-cocked beauty whispering warnings and advice to some fresh-faced newly arrived dreamer down on Hollywood Boulevard: "There's lots of pretty, pretty ones who want to get you high . . . "

-- Carly Carioli