"Man in the Box" is a single by the American rock band Alice in Chains. It was released as a single in 1991 after being featured on the group's debut full-length album Facelift (1990). 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).

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." The song makes use of a talk box to create the guitar effect. The original Facelift track listing credited only vocalist Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell with writing the song. All post-Facelift compilations credited the entire band. It is unclear as to why the songwriter credits were changed.

"Man in the Box" is widely recognized for its distinctive "wordless opening melody, where Layne Staley's peculiar, tensed-throat vocals are matched in unison with an effects-laden guitar" followed by "portentous lines like: 'Feed my eyes, can you sew them shut?', 'Jesus Christ, deny your maker' and 'He who tries, will be wasted' with Cantrell's drier, less-urgent voice." along with harmonies provided by both Staley and Cantrell in the lines 'Won't you come and save me'.

In a recorded interview with MuchMusic USA, Layne Staley stated that the lyrics are about censorship in the mass media, and "I was really really stoned when I wrote it, so it meant something else at the time", he said laughing,. He also made it a point to ensure that all fans knew the song was not about veal, Layne Staley loved to eat veal.

"Man in the Box" was released as a single in 1991. "Man in the Box" is widely considered to be one of the band's signature songs, even though it only peaked at number 18 on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart at the time of its release and failed to hit the Modern Rock Tracks chart. The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1992. The song was number 19 on VH1's VH1 40 Greatest Metal Songs and its solo was rated the 77th greatest guitar solo by Guitar World. It was number 50 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s in 2007. Steve Huey of Allmusic called the song "an often overlooked but important building block in grunge's ascent to dominance" and "a meeting of metal theatrics and introspective hopelessness."

...
Wikipedia