Trivia
- “Lose Yourself” was released as the lead single from the 8 Mile soundtrack, becoming Eminem’s first No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained for twelve consecutive weeks, while also topping the charts in over 20 countries worldwide.
- The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 2003 Oscars, making Eminem the first hip-hop artist to win in the category. He did not attend the ceremony to accept the award.
- The song also won two Grammy Awards for Best Male Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Song, the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Song, and an MTV Video Music Award for Best Video from a Film.
- The song is one of two songs from the album that appear in the film, the other being “8 Mile.”
- The song won Best Video from a Film at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, beating JC Chasez’s “Blowin’ Me Up (With Her Love)”, Madonna’s “Die Another Day”, and Britney Spears’ “Boys.”
- In a 2017 interview with Billboard, Jeff Bass stated that the song was originally “a little more rock-y,” featuring distorted guitars that were ultimately replaced with keyboards.
- The song’s demo version was released on the SHADYXV compilation album in 2014. It was later included on 8 Mile (20th Anniversary Edition) in 2022.
Words from Eminem and Jeff Bass
“When we were making 8 Mile, I was revisiting this old CD from two years before, going through old loops. I found the “Lose Yourself” demo on this session where me and Jeff Bass were just making beats. Jeff was just sitting on those guitar chords, and then it went into something different. I was just like “Yo, that section, right there, I gotta make a beat out of that.” I recorded the demo version of it the same day I made the beat. I didn’t like the rhyme, and put it off to the side. But it’s one of those beats I never gave up on. That beat was definitely a highlight of my producing. I ended up doing the new version on the set of the movie, just writing between takes.
“I went to the trailer during lunch and laid a scratch from top to bottom, just one take through and then stacked some ad-libs and shit. I was going to come back and re-do it. I actually ended up keeping it. That’s my most vivid memory-that song, and walking around set with a pad of paper. If I didn’t have that, I’d write it on my hand. I was like a little hamster: I’d go from my lunch trailer to the treadmill to run and then jump to the music trailer to make some beats.
“We started “Lose Yourself” in September of ’01, and it came out in ’02. So it took about a year, back-and-forth, to complete. A lot of the music was completed but the vocals and the words weren’t 100 percent completed by that time. I’d say it took about a year to really develop that song.