The Story Behind The Song: Understanding Nine Inch Nails’ classic ‘Hurt’
Whether you’re listening to the Nine Inch Nails original version or the arguably more famous cover by Johnny Cash, ‘Hurt’ is an undeniably bleak song that deals with themes of self-harm, suicidal ideation and drug dependency. While putting it on at a party is sure to sour the mood and lose you a few friends in the process, there’s also an unavoidable power to the track and one that will stop the listener dead in their tracks to take a few contemplative moments to soak it all in.
The original song that Nine Inch Nails’ creative powerhouse Trent Reznor tacked onto the end of the band’s second studio album, The Downward Spiral, is an uncharacteristically subdued track that avoids the noisy and erratic sound that had pervaded the rest of the album and the band’s work to date. While there are layers of feedback and distortion heard over the track, the bare bones are what makes the song stand out so much in the first place, with Reznor claiming that it felt a “little too vulnerable” and that it put too many of his own emotions on display for all to hear.
The lyrics follow the overall themes of the conceptual album before that, in which the narrator endures a dramatic change in emotions and begins to harm himself and those around him. On the penultimate track, ‘The Downward Spiral’, the album’s protagonist attempts suicide but ultimately fails to cause fatal harm to himself, and ‘Hurt’ sees him grapple with overcoming all of the depths of despair that he has dragged himself into.
Speaking to Uncut about the song’s origins, Reznor claimed that he initially didn’t want to include the song on the album at all, and it nearly didn’t feature due to a number of factors. “I wrote that after I thought the record was finished,” he told the magazine. “I was uneasy about putting it on the album because that song felt like I was saying I needed help. I wouldn’t admit that to myself but when I wrote it I felt like I was sitting in a pile of rubble and there was a hint of regret and remorse.”
Although the song and its subject aren’t easy listening, it quickly became a fan favourite and was a staple of the group’s live performances. However, it would ultimately become a self-fulfilling prophecy for Reznor, as the “empire of dirt” he speaks about in the song’s chorus became a reality, with drugs slowly taking over his life in the years following. “I wrote the album about somebody who follows this path who was an extension of me,” he said. “But it was in my head. I hadn’t actually lived it. Then later I lived it. I didn’t realise the record was a premonition. I was using the metaphor of drugs at the forefront of what was going on.”
Claiming that these depths were something it took a long time for him to pull himself out of, it wouldn’t be until eight years after its release when Reznor witnessed it receive a second life when country legend Johnny Cash recorded an unlikely cover of the song in 2002. While Reznor was initially ambivalent about the idea of Cash recording such a personal track, and indeed for an artist from a completely different musical background to be attempting it, his eventual reaction to the interpretation would be one of immense praise.
“The video he made of that song was overwhelming,” he said of the clip, which features the sorrowful elderly Cash sitting in his armchair and thinking forlornly about his past. “When I saw it, the power and beauty of music struck me in a really profound way.”
Speaking about how he was thrilled to have seen a song from one of the darkest and most hopeless periods of his own life spun into something even more poignant, Reznor said that he was flattered by the transformation it had gone through in the years since he first wrote it. “It came at a very insecure time in my life and it felt like a nudge and boost and a hug from God. It said, ‘Everything’s OK, and the world is bigger than what’s just in my head.’”
