“I couldn’t have written it myself”: The Nine Inch nails song Trent Reznor knew was beyond him
Over the past few decades, Trent Reznor has become one of America’s most prolific songwriters. Both as the primary songwriter behind Nine Inch Nails, as well as his various collaborations with other artists, and extensive soundtracking work on films like The Social Network, Soul, and The Killer, Reznor’s songwriting skill largely transcends genre, drawing from countless different avenues of inspiration. Sometimes, though, that inspiration is a little too prevalent within his work.
Although Reznor has been active in the music industry since the early 1980s, he first burst onto the mainstream radar with Nine Inch Nails during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Redefining the style of American industrial rock, the band’s magnum opus came in 1994 with the release of The Downward Spiral. One of the most pivotal records of the decade, Reznor demonstrated the breadth and originality of his songwriting talents on the album, penning some of his most enduring tracks.
Best remembered for era-defining songs like ‘Hurt’, ‘Closer’, and ‘March of the Pigs’, there are very few, if any, dud-tracks on The Downward Spiral. A notable highlight comes on the track ‘A Warm Place’, a song which took Reznor himself by surprise when he first wrote the song. “There was one point when we were doing the record that I came up with this melody, and I thought, ‘this is really good,’” he later shared, “and that I couldn’t have written it myself.”
This level of self-doubt and imposter syndrome is not uncommon within the world of rock songwriting, particularly in a landscape as saturated as American rock during the 1990s. Many songwriters throughout musical history have doubted their own prowess, even while managing to produce some truly groundbreaking tracks. “So I played it for [producer] Flood, and he said, ‘That’s really good,’ and I said, ‘That’s gotta be somebody else’s song.’”
A preliminary search for similar melodies yielded no results, and so ‘A Warm Place’ made it onto the tracklisting of The Downward Spiral. Nevertheless, there was something about that catchy melody that remained annoyingly familiar to Reznor, whose extensive record collection still could not provide any answer to whether it was written by someone else.
“So I played it for a couple other people,” Reznor remembered, “and said, ‘I think this is something off Low, this just sounds familiar… I don’t know what it is.’” The songwriter had always been open about his deep-rooted appreciation for David Bowie, with the seminal 1977 album Low particularly influential on the development of A Downward Spiral. Seemingly, the inspiration for ‘A Warm Place’ came from Bowie’s repertoire, too, but not from one of his well-known anthems.
Eventually, Reznor realised where the inspiration for the song had come from. “We did it, record’s out, and one day I was talking on the phone and I got Scary Monsters, which came out on Rykodisc finally,” he shared during an interview with David Bowie himself, “And so I put that on and it’s got bonus tracks at the end. And I’m listening, and this song comes on that, to my horror, it’s the same…’Crystal Japan.’
The instrumental song was originally written during the sessions for his Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980, but it was only ever issued in Japan, where it was used in an advertisement for Crystal Jun Rock brand shochu. It was not released outside of Japan until the album was given deluxe reissues and bonus tracks. Somewhere along the way, however, Trent Reznor heard the song, and it must have stuck in his mind long enough to manifest itself within ‘A Warm Place’.
