How Jesus and Mary Chain shaped Trent Reznor: “Bury nice pop songs in unlistenable noise”
Trent Reznor is a strong example of a dynamic artist. I mean, he started an industrial rock band but wrote a song so emotionally raw that the great Johnny Cash felt compelled to cover it, giving the country icon a late-career hit—what could be more versatile than that?
Reznor has become such a respected creative force that he’s broken through every barrier and stereotype. Typically, metal bands like Nine Inch Nails aren’t seen as the home of musical virtuosos, but Reznor is now considered one. He’s trusted to score significant feature films, proving that range and reputation can reshape expectations.
So much of it, though, comes down to the fact that Reznor refuses to be boxed in. No one was ever going to tie him down as just the frontman of a band or tether him to the typical sounds, styles, attitudes or rules that come with his origin genre. He was never going to settle for simply writing and performing angsty alternative material and leaving it at that. Even on their debut, with the very first track ‘Head Like A Hole’, the point was made.
Allow me a tangent here. In 2019, Disney kid turned outlandish singer, Miley Cyrus, rewrote the song to perform it as a fictional pop star in an episode of Black Mirror. In the episode, Cyrus plays Ashley O, a singer being turned into an android, and the show needed an aggressively upbeat track. The fact that they could even pick this Nine Inch Nails song, flip it on its head, and rewrite it into a pop anthem proves how dynamic Reznor’s composition is. The redone version became a hit off the back of the show, which further demonstrates his talent for writing the kind of material with a foolproof core. The intrigue of a dark song being purposefully transformed into something blindingly bright and happy – that’s precisely the sort of duality Reznor has always been drawn to.
He approved of Cyrus’ remake because it embodies the kind of interesting musical contradiction that has always inspired him, connecting back to one of his very first influences.
“Well, a lot of what I’ve done as Nine Inch Nails has been governed by fear. I was trying to keep the songs in a framework that was tough,” Reznor recalls of his early days of songwriting, where he couldn’t seem to let himself be as free as his legacy became. But then he got into one band; “I learnt a lot from Jesus and Mary Chain about how to bury nice pop songs in unlistenable noise.”
There is nothing at all in common between Miley Cyrus and Jesus and the Mary Chain, but this point holds up. From the band, Reznor learnt to shake off genre, write what he wanted, follow his gut, and indulge in a gorgeous, hooky core even in the wildest tracks. “The idea being if you can get behind that wall, you find there’s a pearl inside,” he said, and that’s been his ethos since.
It’s also where the success lies. That’s the pearl that makes covers like Cyrus’ or Cash’s possible, what lets Nine Inch Nails reach such a broad audience, and what allows Reznor himself to break out of any mould.
