But perhaps the most celebrated accomplishment was iconic singer-songwriter Johnny Cash’s decision in 2002 to cover the song “Hurt”, the final track on The Downward Spiral the cover and its powerfully moving Mark Romanek-shot video would be Cash’s last great contribution to music, and while the transcendence that he brings to the song gives Reznor’s own words more weight and meaning, the gesture itself suggests that the song – and indeed the entire album – is less a product of the 1990s than it is of the human condition itself.ĭespite having 14 other options in Los Angeles and his admitted ignorance (since nobody brought this to his attention), Reznor, his manager, and Flood wound up recording in one of the most infamous locations in American history, 10050 Cielo Drive. Clearly he was, as the album had gone quadruple platinum before the end of the decade, its songs used in films (most famously in the opening credits for David Fincher’s Se7en) and its sound emulated by countless bands. The result sounds at first like cacophonous noise, but through multiple listens filter into driving rhythms, forceful melodies, and, through all of it, Reznor’s plaintive pleas to be heard and understood. This use of sex as a means of minimizing or pushing away other people recurs again in “Big Man with a Gun” (“I can reduce you if I want”), “Eraser” (“Use you/ Scar you/ Break you”), and “Reptile”(“Oh my precious whore…/Need to contaminate to alleviate this loneliness”), and suggests that because everyone around the protagonist lacks meaning or identity in these songs, he is entirely alone, save for the addictions that eventually let him down as well (“Hurt”: “the needle tears a hole/ The old familiar sting/ Try to kill it all away/ But I remember everything”).Īll these themes are propelled through a sonic landscape that exists in layers of texture, incorporating a combination of guitars and percussion, keyboards, synths, and an array of movie and sound samples, many of which are inverted, repurposed, and re-contextualized. desecrate you…” and “penetrate you”, all suggestions of transgression that bring him “closer to God” through either the hollow superiority of dominance or the fleeting sense of epiphanous release. Lead single “March of the Pigs” helps establish this latter sense of contempt for social conformity (“all the pigs are all lined up… Let’s discredit it/ Let’s pick away at it”), which in turn allows for the protagonist to push further away from social acceptance.įollow up single “Closer” (often frustratingly misinterpreted as a song about carnal desire) doubles down by examining how meaningless sex allows for a temporary but empty reprieve from a “flawed” existence, although only after establishing that there is the need to “violate you. The song cycle, influenced in large part by Pink Floyd’s The Wall and David Bowie’s Low, covers elements of self-destruction, self-control, dehumanization of the self and others, addiction, sex, and anti-conformity. The concept for the album was conceived after Reznor was inspired by a “negative vibe” felt by the band at a European hotel after the band toured as part of the Lollapalooza lineup. Regardless, after spending almost two years on the album Reznor would ultimately create the work for which he would be most frequently associated with: a fully realized and semi-autobiographical concept record built around the “spiral” down which a central protagonist disengages from the society around him, inevitably finding himself alone and on the verge of suicide (there is some debate about whether or not the protagonist does indeed kill himself – the whispered lyrics in the second to last track would suggest that he does, but then the reflective lyrics in the final track suggest otherwise). That The Downward Spiral has been so justifiably lauded as one of the definitive albums not just of its genre but of the entire decade speaks in part to the mythology surrounding it: Reznor recorded much of it in the same house in the Hollywood Hills where Sharon Tate had been murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969 (unironically Marilyn Manson would record his debut album in the same studio) in what would be a tumultuous process, plagued by Reznor’s mental health and addiction issues, as well as by creative disagreements with co-producer Flood. The evolution in sound is more pronounced, the writing is more complex, and even the album art, in its perfect visual integration with the music, suggests an altogether different creative mind. Trent Reznor’s second album as Nine Inch Nails was so far removed from their debut that it could have been recorded by a different band (or at least a different Trent Reznor).
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