Trent Reznor depreciation thread

[LemonMelon]

I'm sitting here listening to The Downward Spiral and getting my white suburban angst on, and I'm realizing that the only thing keeping this and every other Nine Inch Nails record from being totally awesome is his shitty lyrics. Downward Spiral isn't that bad in particular, but look at some of these gems from The Fragile:



"God himself will reach his arm through
Just to push you down
Just to hold you down"

"I try to save myself but myself keeps slipping away"

"She shines
In a world full of ugliness
She matters
When everything is meaningless."

"Sometimes I have everything
Yet I wish I felt something"

"Underneath it all, we feel so small
The Heavens fall
But still we crawl"

"Pleading and/ Needing and/ Bleeding and/ Breeding and/ Feeding/ Exceeding"

"Now everything is clear
I can erase the fear
I can disappear"

Or how about this entire song:

"So impressed with all you do
tried so hard to be like you
flew too high and burnt the wing
lost my faith in everything

lick around divine debris
taste the wealth of hate in me
shedding skin succumb defeat
this machine is obsolete

made the choice to go away
drink the fountain of decay
tear a hole exquisite red
fuck the rest and stab it dead

broken bruised forgotten sore
too fucked up to care anymore
poisoned to my rotten core
too fucked up to care anymore"


OK, what the hell? Trent Reznor perpetuates every bad cliche angst rock is known for right there, yet internet nerds still get off on this crap. He bashes Radiohead, yet steals their idea for his new album, charging hundreds of dollars for a box set of his recent noodlings. I'll give him some credit; at least he's not stupid enough to gouge people for a NIN album containing vocals. We all got off easy there. Regardless, he acts like a pretentious twat in interviews, he acts like a pretentious twat on his albums, and the only talent he has is making things sound cool. Imagine a NIN album that's not buried in studio gloss, perhaps one featuring just him on acoustic guitar singing this tripe into a plain ol' microphone. He would be instantly excommunicated from the church of All That Is Cool In Rock, and his credibility sucked away halfway into the first track.

But still, I wouldn't mind him producing my album as long as he had zero input into the songwriting process.

 

[u2popmofo]

I personally have never been able to get into Nine Inch Nails, though a good number of my friends worshiped them in their heyday.

 

[Dalton]

I want to fuck you like an animal.

 

[redhotswami]

I want to fuck you like an animal.

dinner first.

 

[Dalton]

I want to feel you from the inside

 

[Dalton]

You get me closer to God (was he really fucking a Nun? Cause that is AWEsome. A lot of guys have a school girl fantasy. I've got a nun fantasy)

 

[Zoots]

NIN never did too much for me. I don't know. Their mechanical sound gets weary after a few listens. I do like Closer though.

 

[beegee]

I saw NIN live a few times when Pretty Hate Machine was the only album.

It was a different time back then, and gloriously so.

 

[Aardvark747]

Still love Pretty Hate Machine

 

[IWasBored]

so you're just apeshit for ghosts 1-90million then, right?

 

[U2DMfan]

I don't know anyone that has flipped 23-25 y.o. and really looked to NIN for lyrical inspiration of any kind. It's cool stuff when you are bitter and brooding and caught up in ideals that aren't living up, but once you grow up, they get stale.

I watched the video for the Hand that Feeds the other morning, what a great groove that song has. What a shittastic chorus and even as bad verse lyrics.

The guy is a great musician though, I mostly listen to him for the music.

He hasn't made a great album in 14 years.

The reason he won't sit in a studio with a guitar or a piano and himself is because his voice is SHIT and he knows it. Unless he's able to distort it or scream the melody.

He did obviously write Hurt and did a great version of it for that Katrina relief thing where he was sitting at a piano by himself but a whole album of that would get old.

He needs to get into production and film scoring fulltime.