"Stan" is a song by American rapper Eminem featuring British singer Dido. It was released on December 9, 2000 as the third single from Eminem's third studio album The Marshall Mathers LP (2000). It peaked at number one in the United Kingdom and Australia.
The song was produced by The 45 King, and uses a slightly modified break from Dido's "Thank You" as its base sample. The track also samples the opening lines of "Thank You" as its chorus. Coincidentally, both songs were released as singles in late 2000. "Stan" has been called one of Eminem's best songs and is considered one of his signature songs. Rolling Stone magazine ranked "Stan" at #296 in their list in The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song was also listed at #15 on VH1's list of the greatest hip hop songs of all-time. It has sold over 880,000 copies in the United Kingdom. "Stan" was also named by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
The song was nominated for multiple awards, including Best Song at the MTV Europe Music Awards, Video of the Year, Best Rap Video, Best Direction, Best Cinematography at the MTV Video Music Awards, but only won Best International Artist Video at the MuchMusic Video Awards. In April 2011, Complex magazine put together a list of the 100 greatest Eminem songs, ranking "Stan" at #2. The name of the character in the namesake song has given rise to a slang term online which refers to overzealous maniacal obsessed fans of a celebrity or personality. During his performance at the 2001 Grammys, Elton John was a surprise guest playing piano and helping with Dido's chorus. At the end they hugged each other and thanked the crowd.
The suffix -stan (Persian: ـستان -stān) is Persian for "place of" or "country". It appears in the names of many regions, especially in Central and South Asia, but also in the Caucasus and Russia; areas where significant amounts of Persian culture were spread or adopted. The suffix is also used more generally, as in Persian and Urdu rigestân (ریگستان) "place of sand, desert", Pakistan "land of the pure", Hindustan "land of the Hindus", golestan (گلستان) "place of flowers, garden", etc.
The suffix, originally an independent noun, but evolving into a suffix by virtue of appearing frequently as the last part in nominal compounds, is of Indo-Iranian and ultimately Indo-European origin: It is cognate with Sanskrit sthā́na (Devanagari: स्थान [st̪ʰaːna]), meaning "the act of standing", from which many further meanings derive, including "place, location", and ultimately descends from Proto-Indo-Iranian *sthāna-.
The Proto-Indo-European root from which this noun is derived is *steh₂- (older reconstruction *stā-) "to stand" (or "to stand up, to step (somewhere), to position (oneself)"), which is also the source of English to stand, Latin stāre, and Ancient Greek histamai (ἵσταμαι), all meaning "to stand" and Russian стан (stan, meaning "settlement" or "semi-permanent camp"). In Polish and Ukrainian, stan means "state" or "condition", while in Serbo-Croatian it translates as "apartment" (a Slovenian word "stanovanje" means apartment or other closed space of living is an obvious derivative of stan) in its modern usage, while its original meaning was "habitat". In Czech and Slovak, it means "tent" or, in military terms, "headquarters". Also in Germanic languages, the root can be found in Stand ("place, location"), and in Stadt (German), stad/sted (Dutch/Scandinavian), stêd (West Frisian) and stead (English), all meaning either "place" or "city". The suffix -stan is analogous to the suffix -land, present in many country and location names.
Stan! (born Steven Brown on 16 October 1964 in Brooklyn, New York City, United States) is an American author, cartoonist, and game designer. He is sometimes credited as Stan Brown.
Brown was born and grew up on Long Island and attended Binghamton University. Brown began publishing fiction, cartoons, and games professionally in 1982, usually under the pen name "Stan!." He is the author of numerous short stories, novels, roleplaying products, comics and cartoons. He has served as a graphic designer and line editor for West End Games; an editor and game designer for TSR, Inc.; and an author, senior game designer, and creative director for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. He has also been the creative content manager at Upper Deck Entertainment.
In 2007, R. Hyrum Savage formed a subsidiary of his OtherWorld Creations with Brown called Super Genius Games. He has also worked as the creative content manager for Upper Deck Entertainment, and the creative vice president for The Game Mechanics, Inc. Brown is the Creative Director for Super Genius Games. He co-founded The Game Mechanics with JD Wiker, Marc Schmalz, and Rich Redman.
Östanå is a village situated in Östra Göinge Municipality, Skåne County, Sweden with 221 inhabitants in 2005.