The band Trent Reznor called “heartbreakingly excellent”
At the dawn of the 1990s, rock fans were getting away from the 24-hour party of the hair metal movement. Although there had been pastel colours all over MTV and one band after another was wearing sequins and studs, the alternative movement tore away all of the phoniness of the time to pave the way for music that felt more authentic. Then again, Trent Reznor realised that more could be done with the glitchy sounds of 1980s music.
Coming out just before the alternative movement began, Nine Inch Nails’s Pretty Hate Machine was the first step towards industrial music’s takeover of the mainstream. Before the likes of Ministry began getting their songs on MTV, Reznor’s pop-centric approach to the most pitch-black music imaginable was unmatched by his peers. Then again, Reznor didn’t get there without help from his favourite band.
Since the late 1970s, The Cure had been employing a similar approach to rock and roll with Robert Smith’s tales of gloom. Though not every song necessarily had a melancholy melody, the way Smith shook with emotion every time he opened his mouth tapped into listeners’ hearts in a way few others could match.
Though most casual rock fans dismissed The Cure as music for outsiders, Reznor found a companion in what he was hearing. First listening to The Head on the Door, Reznor fell in love, telling The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “One of the best things about getting exposed to this tidal wave of new music was getting to hear The Cure for the first time. I hadn’t heard anything like it before. A lot of darkness I felt in my head was coming back at me through the speakers, and it blew my mind. It felt like this music was written just for me”.
While Reznor’s taste for The Cure may not have been the most mainstream choice, it didn’t dissuade him from infusing their sonic textures in his music. Throughout every piece of Nine Inch Nails’s discography, there are subtle traces of The Cure’s power in the grooves, whether it be the stuttering rhythms or the open-hearted yearning.
Reznor kept The Cure close to his chest even when working his way into the darkest realms of his psyche. Something like ‘A Warm Place’ from The Downward Spiral could very well be a backing track for a Cure classic if it had only had Robert Smith’s voice or a heavily echoed guitar.
No matter how many sonic lessons he learned from his idols, Reznor remembers that the music was the one consistency in his life, going on to say, “The Cure are one of the most unique, brilliant, heartbreakingly excellent rock bands that the world has ever been lucky enough to enjoy”.
Even as Nine Inch Nails was making their mark on a new generation of disaffected youth, Robert Smith was also paying attention to what Reznor was doing. Throughout their 1990s and 2000s output, The Cure would go on to make slightly glitchy beats that had more in common with what Reznor was doing back in his prime. Both genres might seem completely different when looked at closely, but both Smith and Reznor are familiar with the size of their black heart.
