The following was sent to me concerning the music of Trent Reznor. It's full of excellent NIN interpretations.

this page posted by Nailz Interpretations

To the point, I was thinking the other day about Nine Inch Nails, as I have done often, and for the first time, a thought occurred to me. What would I had been like if Nine Inch Nails did not exist? Before I could come to a conclusion on that, however, i had to realize what parts of me were there because of Nine Inch Nails.

I'd like to take the time to list what Nine Inch Nails songs mean the most to me. I love them all, but a few stand out ferociously in my psyche and these, I feel, have had the most impact on me. Nine Inch Nails over course of time have driven me to unparalelled rage and swiftly back to sadness so deep that I cried. Most male NIN fans I know do not do that.

First, from Pretty Hate Machine:

Pretty Hate Machine, while a pop-drum-like album with many obvious aspects has an underlying ominousness to it that I think was what emerged into the Downward Spiral. The album depicted enough for the shallow to grasp, but you never really saw what was there until you looked past the lyrics put to music and saw it as an entire thing.

Terrible Lie: This song was there in a time in my life when I found release by screaming at God for my own self-induced torment. I sort of fed on this song and used it as a crutch to support myself. The song's not all about anger though, there's an added bit of hope there too, as there is with all NIN songs if you know where to look. It's the realization that the thoughts you have are your own. Terrible Lie gave me the courage to look my social adversaries in the face and demand to be heard. That was the beginning.

Something I Can Never Have: Yes, the cliche' heartbreak song that everyone thinks is sad, but redundant. This song to me was about letting go of the past and drowning in your future. Or so it seemed until one day I noticed that the last part of the song had a duality to it. "You make this all go away..." The very last chorus; the music is slowing like chilled blood and falling and you're falling with it, it's dying into itself and you can't get out because that's where you want to be. You think you hear Trent dying with you, voice sliding down the Abyss behind you, but it's not. It's rising. Powerful, indignant, his voice is screaming "You make this all go away..." and that's what it's doing, but it's not taking him with it because he's indignant, the further the music makes you slide, the harder and higher the voice lifts in defiance. If you let go of the music and grasp onto the rage and courage behind it and through it, you fly, not fall. Once again, hope through realization, "I just want something that I can never have" and that something is gone and rotted to hell, but I'm still here.

Kinda I Want To: This song struck a chord with me that ran so deep, I hear the song for the first time every time I hear it. It embodies everyone that I could never love because they wouldn't love me. It embodies every reckless abandon that I could never risk because of my own cowardice. It's my nemesis and my saviour all rolled into one thing. "Maybe God will cover up his eyes..." God not being the omnipotent, but the greater majority, the social standard of right and wrong that restricts us and defines our morals and ethics, regardless, "my moral standing is lying down."

Broken: Album and Video: My favorite songs on Broken have always been Happiness in Slavery and Gave Up. One day, I saw the videos to these two songs on a bootleg tape someone had. I was mortified, horrified, revolted, enraptured, transfixed and riveted. I saw a side to Trent Reznor that I only saw in my nightmares. It was like he was looking at me personally, saying "This is what I see when I look into your eyes." I wanted to run away, but to do so would have been pointless, the images were forever locked in me. "It took you, to make me realize..." that I was sick inside myself, "It took you to make me realize..." that I'm truly nothing without my demons, "It took you..." Gave up makes me want to violently kill in the name of whatever justice I see fit to extract. It's all my anger, all my hate, all my sickness, screaming "...gonna' smash myself to pieces, I don't know what else to do..." When locked in your own emotional current, you literally throw yourself away and find a new standing built on the foundation of the rubble that was what you used to be. Again, the Hate Machine Connection: "I was up above it, now I'm down in it..." and what I found was Gave Up. "I tried, I gave up..." holding on to my illusions and my lies. "What I used to think was me is just a fading memory, I looked him in the eye and said good-bye. Throw it away." The songs should be combined.

The Downward Spiral: After hundreds and hundreds of listens, I still find something new in it. It's not about suffering, it's not about anguish. It's about a man, once again, I see as me, locked into freedoms that nothing can define, yet he must understand or be oppressed.

Mr. Self Destruct, simply, is me in eternal war with me. My need to control versus my need to be dominated. A viscious cirlce of self-loathing and abuse.

The Becoming: I've done this song and it is hellish. It's a graphic depiction of the cold-blooded destruction of feeling. The reduction from humanity to soulless machine. To not want to care. "It wont give up, it wants me dead, goddamn this noise inside my head..." The enemy not being the machine, but the emotion, the heart, rebelling against the cold isolation, becoming the aggressor. The violent emotional indignation against your own deconstruction. The realization that "that part of me" is still here and will always be. That part of you that screams back at the machine, "I don't wanna' listen, but it's all too clear." The part of you that is above the machine, the part that's "hiding backwards inside of me, I feel so unafraid..."

Eraser: The point is reached when you realize that you intentionally harm everything you touch and you do so anyway because that's all you have, all you ever really wanted, but you will always hope that eventually someone will come along and destroy you utterly, because you deserve it.

This is so incomplete that it's not even amusing. I feel like I've inadequately described nothingness in these sentences. It almost makes it pointless. To conclude, without Nine Inch Nails, I would simply be somebody else. For better, for worse. NIN has been an inspiration and a curse. My own self destruction and rebirth. Trent Reznor is more than about profit. You can't impact people like that with just songs written for profit. Every word he speaks is a testimony that reverberates off the soul like some kind of sonar that shows you, whether you like it or not, what's inside of you. All you have to do is take the challenge and look. "You know, you know who you are..."

I'm currently in a band. If I could ever possibly resonate with that kind of power and feeling, I would collapse beneath it. Trent Reznor is the closest thing I have ever had to a hero. He's taught me more and shown me more than almost anybody. If I could thank him personally, I would. If I can do him honor and carry on his strength in my music, I will.

Hopefully, one day the world will understand us both.

"Now doesn't make you feel better..."

~HK~

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