Then Shady kinda 360s by recounting an incident in which his mother kicked him out of the house in the dead of winter. So again, the listener is made aware that there are some things she did back in the day which still bother the rapper. Verse 1īut at the onset of the first verse, Marshall finally comes clean by taking the fault of the situation as it stands onto himself. He admits that he has the tendency to say things without ‘ thinking about who what he said hurts’. He then references Cleanin’ Out My Closet directly and goes on to clarify that he ‘doesn’t hate’ his mother’. Rather he esteems her along the same lines that most sons tend to regard their moms. He then states his desire for the two of them to dead their beef. In other words the “headlights” fundamentally symbolizes the two of them driving away from each other or more specifically Debbie driving away from Eminem. Meanwhile, the title of the track is symbolic of their separation. But this time, in the chorus he shares the blame for their fractured relationship. Eminem sets off the track by once again harping on his less-than-ideal upbringing. Or looked at alternatively, even if he is apologizing to his mom it is still pretty clear that he harbors ill feelings about the way she treated him during his childhood.
Like Cleanin’ Out My Closet, Headlights is primarily biographical in its approach. But other comments have not been so easily forgotten, particularly when it came to Shady dissing specific individuals. One needs to only look at his more-recent beef with Nick Cannon in 2019/2020 as a prime example of Eminem disses gone wrong. And as is well known, Slim has even crossed the sacred line of negatively criticizing his own mother on record. He did so on quite a few tracks, most notable amongst them being of course 2002’s Cleanin’ Out My Closet. But at the end of the day Eminem has proven that he does in fact have a normal human heart. For not only has he grown to absolutely detest the aforementioned song, but he also sought to make things right with his mother, once again on record, via 2013’s Headlights. In fact someone like Eminem actually stepping back to apologize to someone he offended in such a manner, even if it’s his own mom, was deemed “most shocking” by the likes of Rolling Stone.