title Music to be Murdered By comes from a 1958

album by English filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock,

Hollywood’s “Master of Suspense.” The LP pairs
quirky orchestral pieces by conductor Jeff Alexander
with darkly funny spoken-word passages by
Hitchcock—things like, “I trust that everyone is
enjoying the music. As the title of the album Like
most latter-day Eminem albums, Music to Be
Murdered By received mixed reviews, but it
nevertheless debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200,
giving Em his 10th consecutive chart-topper. From
there, Eminem just kept on recording—again, it was
2020, and there was nothing else going on—and
pretty soon, it became clear he was making a whole
new album, one that picked up more or less where
the last one left off.
The first song Eminem recorded for Music to Be
Murdered By: Side B was “Alfred’s Theme,” a self-
produced number built around a sample of French
composer Charles Gounod’s “Funeral March of a
Marionette,” better known as the theme song from
the ’60s horror-mystery anthology series Alfred
Hitchcock Presents. “Alfred’s Theme” is a
quintessential Eminem song. There are irreverent
quips about current events—“Before I check the mic
(Check, check, one, two) / I give it a extra swipe with
a Lysol disinfectant wipe (Good evening) /
Coronavirus in effect tonight”—cartoonish threats of
violence (“Overkill like a pipe bomb in your
pinebox”), celeb
homophone