“I hadn’t agonised over it”: The hit Nine Inch Nails song that pissed off Trent Reznor
Most musicians can never really predict whether a song will resonate until after its release. There might be a hunch or a hook that makes it feel it will easily fit into radio play rotation, but whether it will gain traction beyond the initial hype is always uncertain. Some, like Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, find that the ones that become popular are ones he once considered subpar.
Interestingly, some of the best songs in history have been created with these attitudes behind closed doors. While some scathe away, trying to be as intricate and considered as possible by making music that means something, some of the most popular songs of all time are the ones that weren’t given that much time or thought.
While this might be the case for many reasons, the most obvious is that these songs often result from subconscious pandering to convention or whatever feels most accessible. Creating something with refined intricacy takes much more time and effort, whereas a catchy radio hit tends to come together more easily—especially when you know which boxes to tick.
In other cases, even the less radio-friendly career-defining hits seem to sometimes tap into something far more effortlessly endearing than the others. Somehow, it’s often easy to detect when a song has fallen into place naturally, even when the musician behind the creation didn’t necessarily buy into its potential in the first place.
For Trent Reznor, this was the case for ‘Head Like A Hole’. While writing it, Reznor felt it didn’t really show off everything he wanted Nine Inch Nails to be, even admitting he considered it a “throwaway”. Discussing the track with Rolling Stone, he said: “I don’t remember what I was thinking about at the time, but it was pretty much about yelling at a beast without putting a face to it.”
Adding: “I wrote it at the last minute as a throwaway. The rest of Pretty Hate Machine was already written, and we’d revised everything else about nine times.”
This detachment also meant that when the song became as popular as it did, he struggled to appreciate the attention, especially considering he felt it wasn’t even the kind of sound they wanted people to be drawn to, much less associate with their legacy. “This took me 15 minutes in my bedroom,” he said, continuing,” The fact that it produced this huge reaction really pissed me off because I hadn’t agonised over it.”
In time, however, Reznor realised that his feelings towards it came from a place of insecurity. Knowing that he hadn’t spent much time on it, he felt other players would scrutinise his lack of musical proficiency, but of course, that was just an unnecessary paranoia that didn’t take root in anything real. After all, without the song, Nine Inch Nails wouldn’t have had their push into the mainstream, with its imperfection becoming one of the band’s most endearing qualities.
