“Man in the Box” is a song by the American rock band Alice in Chains. It was released as a single in January 1991 after being featured on the group’s debut studio album Facelift (1990). It peaked at No. 18 on Billboard‘s Mainstream Rock chart and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1992. The song was included on the compilation albums Nothing Safe: Best of the Box (1999), Music Bank (1999), Greatest Hits (2001), and The Essential Alice in Chains (2006). “Man in the Box” was the second most-played song of the decade on mainstream rock radio between 2010 and 2019.
In the liner notes of 1999’s Music Bank box set collection, guitarist Jerry Cantrell said of the song; “That whole beat and grind of that is when we started to find ourselves; it helped Alice become what it was.”[2]
The song makes use of a talk box to create the guitar effect. The idea of using a talk box came from producer Dave Jerden, who was driving to the studio one day when Bon Jovi‘s “Livin’ on a Prayer” started playing on the radio.[3]
The original Facelift track listing credited only vocalist Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell with writing the song.[4] All post-Facelift compilations credited the entire band. It is unclear as to why the songwriter credits were changed.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Man In The Box, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
