“You can’t do this”: The tracks Trent Reznor felt were too poppy for Nine Inch Nails
Pop can be such a dirty word in the music world. In fact, I think we are reaching a point in culture where any genre can be considered slightly cringeworthy. Indie, punk and rock all come with their own humorous connotations and stereotypes that allow us to reduce the perception of art into something more understandable, perhaps.
But pop in particular gets a bad wrap in alternative circles. At times, it’s justified. I hear so many pop songs on the radio whose rhythm section is little more than an overly saturated kick drum and a vocal melody that is nothing more than a glorified death march. But there’s also charm in a pop song done well; sometimes, behind the glossy exterior and catchy hook are some genuinely interesting melodies and production choices.
And so in that light, it feels too reductive to label a song you don’t like as simply “too poppy”. If The Beatles took that standpoint, well then we wouldn’t have half of the songs they’ve given us over the years. But for a band like Nine Inch Nails, you can understand why it’s a useful metric. While I am all for genre crossover generally, there are some bands who simply don’t need to exist in certain realms and for Nine Inch Nails, pop definitely isn’t one.
Because ultimately, Trent Reznor puts his hand to so many creative projects that any hankerings for blissful pop can be exercised elsewhere. He knows that with Nine Inch Nails, there is a core identity that needs to exist at the heart of whatever idea they explore.
He explained, “When I was writing ‘The Hand That Feeds’ or ‘Right Where It Belongs’, a voice would pop up in my head and say, ‘You can’t do this, it’s too accessible, too pop, too catchy.’”
He added, “It would be safe for me to make a 14-minute art epic because I’ve done it, and no one is going to make fun of you for doing that. But I wrote some songs and felt like, ‘These are pretty catchy’ and I didn’t write them to buy a new pool, I wrote them because they sounded good to me. At the end of the day, I felt like, ‘It’s a strong song.’”
This entire experience proves the limitation of genres and labels. For me, a fan, I steadfastly believed that Nine Inch Nails shouldn’t flirt with pop sensibilities, and Reznor, the musician, agreed. Pre-assigned tropes of what ‘pop’ was meant to be almost tampered with the natural journey of his creative process.
But what ‘The Hand That Feeds’ and ‘Right Where It Belongs’ both prove is the ridiculousness in that idea. Because upon listening to either, you won’t be presented with the conventions of what we have always considered to be pop. More coherent in their artistic destination, yes, but not bound to structures of catchy hooks and glossy melodies. Nine Inch Nails are inherently the same band they have always been, regardless of the genres they choose to explore, and that’s clear in both of these tracks.
