Trent Reznor tells Rick Rubin that he “teared up” while listening to Dua Lipa
Nine Inch Nails songwriter and founder Trent Reznor has appeared on Rick Rubin’s podcast, Tetragrammaton, for a two-hour conversation to discuss film scoring, songwriting, and Dua Lipa.
Reznor, discussing contemporary artists, explained that he tried to keep his children away from pop music, “For a while, I kept them kind of hermetically sealed away from pop music. Because I think it sucks generally – I had thought that.”
But when Reznor heard his six-year-old daughter listening to Dua Lipa, he gained a new appreciation for the genre: “I heard my daughter, who’s six, singing Dua Lipa the other day. She is so into it and it is so cool. Like this is her music, you know, this is her thing,” he explained.
Reznor continued: “It really reminded me of the art of writing a well-crafted song – I teared up listening to a Dua Lipa track. Because it was just a really well-done piece of music, you know? It was clever. It felt good”.
Detailing further, the Nine Inch Nails man admitted: “It’s a difficult thing to do. I don’t know how to do that. When I’m trying to think of what to say, I’m saying it from the unvarnished me. And that requires me thinking about who I am and where my position is now and all of that together becomes something that feels the stakes are higher.”
Reznor, who recently produced pop artist Halsey’s 2021 album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, also reflected upon his own songwriting process. During the interview, Reznor suggests that the hardest thing is “having something to say, something to say with truth, that has reason to exist rather than just a thing.”
Reznor notes that this difficulty led him to film scoring, which allows him just to arrange music without having to assess his own thoughts on it. He’s now scored over 15 films, often working alongside Nine Inch Nails collaborator Atticus Ross.
Listen to the full conversation below.
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