Overneath The Path Of Misery

Now that the OFFICIAL lyrics are available, I can now reassess about the song after much confusion caused by the unofficial lyrics in the past:

[I also base all of my analysis on interviews with Manson in the passed 6 months]

Born Villain is the coming off of The High End of Low, about his finding the way to being himself again after all the circumstances of life clouding his judgment as to who he wanted to be in life.

"Stare into my Kodak Rome jack-hammer ice eyes"

This seems to signify all he's been through in the past, and all the circumstances that confused him about who he wanted to be in life. As he speaks to the person opposite him, he wants them to understand his struggles.

"I never thought you’d see the asphalt crack, crack, crack like black eggshell."

This line reminds me of a line in the song White Knuckles they did back in 1990:

"Smack dab flat on my back, and the solid ground began to crack. I took her down, and down, and down, and down. I lost my breath. I thought I'd drown."

It has a similar theme. In White Knuckles, he would depend on his loved ones. But now, in Overneath the Path of Misery, its the other way around. He wants to be someone his loved ones can depend on.

"Don’t ever say I never warned you from the start. You’re not a shovel and I’m not your dirt."

This kind of follows the theme from 15:

"Not letting you win won't satisfy me, I'll teach you about loss. If you don't know what forever feels like, I'll show you what it feels like without it." - "I don't need you, I'll say it to myself. But it doesn't mean I won't need somebody."

So, once again, its about him breaking himself of his dependence on others.

"Is there any way to unswallow my pride. Can I fuck myself down?"

Before, he would have to swallow his pride to become dependent in order to properly love someone. Now, since he no longer confuses love with dependence he wants to "unswallow" his pride to gain back his confidence in himself to love someone and stay independent at the same time.

"While I die you can kill the father. 'Dad' is missing an 'E.' "

With I Ching being a big theme in this album, I think that has something to do with this line.

☰ is the symbol for "the creative one." It means force, strength. The head. The father.

I think in this line, he's talking about his change; and saying that while he changes, he must "kill" the circumstances that had caused him to be what he had become.

"No Macbeth confessed Oedipus, no longer present tense."

He is saying that despite all the confusion [since the GAG era] that he's moving on from who he'd become because of all the circumstances that caused it, and he's becoming "who I knew I could be." (From an interview)

MacBeth is a Shakespearean reference, to a play he did about a man, MacBeth, who killed his father to become king and further murdered to maintain his power.

So its like the previous line, also a Shakespearean reference to the same play, where he must "kill" all the circumstances which were clouding his judgment as to who he wanted to be, stripping his life down to restrict himself so he has time to think for himself.

"I won’t regret letting you live even if you forgot what you never saved me from. So I say whatever or for never."

Once again, coming off the previous album. Letting go of the past, all the ones who he felt had let him down; as he realises he shouldn't have depended on them in the first place.

"The Rape of Persephone was choreographed by all the wrong Greeks. The Rape of Persephone was a marketing scheme. Rape rape rape per so phony."

Here, he seems to be talking about his victimisation with the Columbine incident; realising he was never a victim at all, and that what he'd become to escape that was a facade of sorts that he used to run away from that.

"High and overneath, overblown, unbeloved; I cannot be low"

This just about reviews the song as a whole. This is about his feelings while he's been what he realised he didn't like he'd become, and about his overcoming those feelings and stripping his life down to restrict himself in order to think for himself. He's coming to the fruition of becoming confident in who he's always wanted to be.

"From the top of my lungs, to the bottom of my heart--I scream at the chasm in between, and the path of misery."

This wraps up the song, and is about coming out of his shell once again and facing his fears once again in order to achieve this next internal transformation.