The artist Trent Reznor thought was terrible at music: “Sucks”
Trent Reznor didn’t come into the music industry trying to have everyone love whatever he was putting out.
Nine Inch Nails was never an easy band to manage by any means, but looking through his entire career is an entire discography of someone doing whatever they can to challenge the listener at every single turn. So when he saw one of his contemporaries not giving the same amount of attention to their craft, it was bound to be a little bit draining seeing them get the same amount of success.
But Reznor also was at an advantage when he first started making his records. The tide of music was slowly changing towards something else, and while Pretty Hate Machine did have more than a few things in common with people like Depeche Mode, it wasn’t hard to think that the same kids that were getting into angsty rock and roll in the early 1990s would gravitate towards a song like ‘Wish’ as well.
Industrial music was still a relatively new term for the mainstream, and while Ministry wasn’t going to be getting the same amount of attention as Nine Inch Nails were, Reznor still had a secure place on the charts if he could pump out tunes like ‘Closer’. But whereas that movement was people crying out in pain, there was only so long that could happen before people started to whine for the wrong reasons.
Marilyn Manson had already started bringing a macabre edge to everything that was more than a little bit off-putting for some, but whereas Reznor could see the art in that, the nu-metal genre was a completely different thing. Rage Against the Machine helped break down the door for that kind of music, but for every band like Linkin Park with something genuine to say, there were people like Limp Bizkit as well.
That’s not to say that Fred Durst didn’t have a knack for writing hooks. All of those backwards-hat-wearing fans didn’t happen by accident, and making tunes like ‘Nookie’ did at least give them a decent sound, even if the lyrics were more than a little bit abhorrent. It wasn’t the most thoughtful genre in the world, but Reznor was one of many that had already washed his hands of Durst well before Woodstock 1999.
When talking about the band in 2000, Reznor felt that Durst was everything wrong with people trying to create art with their music, saying, “It’s one thing if you know your place, like, ‘Hey, I’m an idiot who plays shitty music, but people buy it, fuck it, I’m having fun’. But it’s another thing when you think you’re David Bowie after you’ve stayed up all night to write a song called ‘Break Stuff’. Fred Durst might be a cool guy, I don’t know him. But his ‘art’ – in the word’s loosest sense – sucks.”
It’s easy to see Reznor as an artiste getting up on his high horse, but it’s not like he was wrong by any means. Although many have fond memories of songs like ‘Break Stuff’ and ‘Re-Arranged’, there’s a reason why not many Limp Bizkit came out after 2000, especially with an album as scattershot as Results May Vary.
Still, that doesn’t mean that Limp Bizkit can’t still draw a crowd, and every one of their reunion shows proved that they have those diehards hanging around, or at the very least are in on their own joke this time. Durst may have been a great coordinator of talent back in the day, but the fact that he made it had more to do with how the public listens to music. Not everyone wants to listen on that deep a level, and ‘Break Stuff’ is bound to tide them over a lot more than ‘A Warm Place’.
