Is Trent being abused by the media...or is he using it?

Is Trent Being Abused by the Media...Or Is He Using It?

While i can't argue that [Closer] is a bad song (because none of his songs are without great merit in my mind), but it is the one song that sells NIN to the masses...to the pigs and the people. Closer is about selling a million plus albums to the shallow and unsophisticated mainstream audience that likes nothing better than meager drivelling such as Nirvana, and simple and gratuitous Marilyn Manson (a Trent copycat). Closer at it's heart is a song that realizes that if it talks about fucking someone like an animal, it will shock the media and thus all the little suburbian mites, the teen children of a cow nation will automatically run out and use it to rebel against evil "authority".

I was sorely dissapointed, i don't truly feel in my heart that Closer is something Trent really wanted to produce. I've been a fan since PHM first came out back in 89' and i'll always be a fan. But truly...what was once cathartic and legitimate pain has become poor comedy and garish theatre.

How can anyone who knows Trent's mind feel that Closer is anything other than something handed as bait. Trent has never been..and never will be about fucking people like animals.

I see so many many people like Trent. Not because what his lyrics have to say are the raw and visceral opening of Trent's very core mind, not because his music breaks sonic frontier and creates a totally unique genre of music all it's own. These little brats like Trent because they think he's "cool"...

They like his hate, they like his angst, and they like the perversion. I was talking to a girl recently..she said Trent was deranged and a madman.
she is in love with him. :(

So sad, Trent is trying to show humanity the dark and stinking heart that lies in all of us. He is screaming out the inhumanity that leads us to war, to genocide, and to self-destructive behavior..and people call him deranged and sick.

But as long as he produces songs that say "i want to fuck you like an animal, you get me closer to God" but have no truly deeper meaning than this...then his records will sell to the morons that are the majority of consumers.

Isn't it strange that the average NIN fan now days is also a young teen that likes Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Hole, and Marilyn Manson? Pearl Jam whom Trent detests, Kurt Kobain whom he has to support because half of his fans do, Courtney Love whom he had to date in order to stir the media... and Marilyn Manson whom he stands up and puts a guitar in that painted pansies hands?

I don't like what i see..Trent was once the Prince of Dark Dreams and a Lord of Suffering. once he was so beautiful..and all that creativity and his unique and fantastic perception of reality still exist within him. But with songs like Closer it makes me wonder where he is taking himself.

Is he being abused by the media...or is he using it?

Return to Essays.