02. It is not Eminem talking to us as the beginning of “’97 Bonnie and Clyde,” but Tori speaking on the behalf of the woman so startlingly trapped behind this harrowing narrative that boys all around the country are prone to chant to. Tori here enlists an outside arranger to compose primary instrumentation for the first time ever, and the result is a strange Bates’ Hotel swirl of strings that ties itself up in one Psycho stab at the end. Tori trips through the internal rhymes of the song hardly paying heed to the other elements, at once the voice of the apologetic mother and the sinister but possesively loving father. “Don’t play with dada’s toy knife honey, let go of it” is said in that off-handed motherly way that betrays the cold hard killer who originally narrated the song, and makes you wonder about who’s really speaking to us in this version. The ghost of this mother is creeping around in the cracks, peeking from behind the horror-music veneer of the song in Tori’s soprano “just the two of us” (that sounds too much like “choose the two of us,” which has even darker implications considering the baby brother that the narrator brings into the picture) but then retreating as the sinister whisper takes over again.
Who is in charge of this car ride, this death march complete with a martial drum beat? Mama is speaking with daddy’s voice but in soft tones that no one could ever imagine coming from his mouth. And, whoever is speaking, they implicate the poor little girl that is along for the ride as Bonnie to Dada’s Clyde. What does this imply? The vision of the real life fugitive pair comes to mind, shot full of holes and draped over the interior of a car while their death was cheered.
Eminem is making money off of songs about killing his wife with his daughter as an unknowing accomplice, but Tori turns them around to put blood on both of their hands. Children bear the sins of their fathers, after all.