[playing "Hurt"]
♪ I hurt myself today… ♪
[Trent Reznor] The thing about "Hurt," more than any other song I've written,
when I wrote it, I felt alone.
You know.
Lost.
But things will be okay, you know? And…
you're okay.
[song continues]
♪ What have I become… ♪
[Hirway] Trent Reznor started making music as Nine Inch Nails in 1988.
His second album, The Downward Spiral, was a dark concept album
that hit number two on the charts and sold millions of copies.
"Hurt" is the last track on the album and the last song he wrote for it.
[Reznor] It feels like somebody kind of walking around the rubble,
having a chance to maybe feel a reflection.
[Hirway] Years later, Johnny Cash recorded a cover of it,
and that went multi-platinum too.
Nowadays, Trent Reznor is also an Oscar- and Emmy-winning composer,
along with his now-bandmate Atticus Ross.
But a couple decades earlier,
Trent Reznor was mining the darkest parts of his own life
to finish The Downward Spiral.
I'm Hrishikesh Hirway.
This is Song Exploder.
[theme music playing]
[Reznor] When I look back at my youth, it was not unhappy,
but alone most of the time.
I'm in rural Pennsylvania, and I feel kind of stuck.
You know, I became acutely aware that there…
was a world out there,
and I would find comfort kind of tuning into albums.
Like Pink Floyd, The Wall.
The music felt like a mystery that you needed to unravel, you know.
I could project into it what I was feeling.
And what I was hearing seemed like it was written
for me… uh, about me.
["Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1" plays]
I could relate to the loneliness and the pain,
and I could put myself in that.
And I thought, you know, I wanted to crack that code.
As a kid sitting at the piano, I could learn my classical pieces,
but sitting on my own, my hands would just play music
that felt like what I wanted to play.
It started to feel like I could channel something out.
It was another language I was able to communicate through.
Initially, it was tiptoeing around things and imitations
of stuff I liked at the time,
but what I hadn't done is really sat down and…
really tried to write.
I'd avoided that.
The experiment was to answer the question
of if I had anything to say.
[playing "Your Touch"]
♪ What if she touches with those… ♪
It made me feel good to take these feelings I had…
Sadness, desperation,
punching a wall, a need to express something,
turn it into something that had some beauty to it.
It wasn't safe, and it didn't feel like it was coming from a protected place.
It was just kind of naked emotion.
♪ Hey, God ♪
♪ Why are you doing this to me… ♪
Unexpectedly, it started to catch on with people.
-[cheering] -♪ Living up what I'm supposed to be… ♪
We toured quite a bit on Pretty Hate Machine, the first album.
There was an agenda at the time to not be mainstream.
♪ Terrible lie… ♪
I want to bend you to come to me
rather than me to compromise to go to you.
But there was trouble with the record label,
and it's hard when you're writing album number two
to not think about, "Are they going to like this thing?"
You know? Should it be more like that thing?
I have to be true to what I think is right
at whatever expense that comes at.
[suspenseful synth music playing]
I know what the next record is,
and I knew the title was The Downward Spiral.
It had an elaborate kind of storyline for it.
I had a timeline written out in a notebook.
Here's the arc of the story.
['Heresy" by Nine Inch Nails plays]
You know, Downward Spiral was the story of someone trying to find salvation
through sex and drugs and self-destruction and self-loathing,
and trying to find purpose and reason.
With the story of The Downward Spiral kind of at its conclusion,
the record starts to get manic and abstract…
hallucinogenic even.
Madness has set in, and it's not going to resolve itself.
"Hurt" was really kind of an afterthought.
It just felt like it could be a little coda to the end of the record
that reflects back with a sense of loss
and regret and longing
that might make the whole record feel more powerful and interesting.
[Hirway] So I got the original tracks from the tape,
and it's really different from what the actual, final song is.
-["Hurt" plays] -There is a main piano part
running through it that isn't actually in the final song.
[piano melody playing]
♪ I hurt myself today ♪
♪ To see if I still feel… ♪
Did you write it on the piano?
I understand the piano more than any other instrument.
I remember sitting at a piano,
and I got out of the way,
and I just let it come out.
But I didn't want it to seem like a piano ballad.
I wanted it to feel acoustic-based
and kind of broken down, like the character.
You have to kind of lean in to even hear what's happening.
But I like the idea that you have to work harder to get to it.
There's a kind of warble on the whole track
to add to that sense of,
"I just found this recording."
Here's something that feels dusty and damaged and lacking confidence
in the rubble of whatever just happened.
♪ I focus on the pain ♪
♪ The only thing that's real… ♪
I haven't listened back to this track for a while.
♪ The needle tears a hole ♪
-What do you hear in your voice? -I'm out of tune a lot.
I'm singing it extremely quiet.
I'd guess that would have come after a number of frustrating takes
of it feeling too sung and less emotional.
That's me trying to sound quiet and sincere.
Just feeling the weird shame and exposure
of showing something intimate to the world,
but it wasn't coming across right.
And I remember being frustrated that I wish I could sing like Bowie.
I wish I had that instrument, you know.
I wanted it to feel less accessible.
I needed to kind of hide inside the music.
And I figured, I'm producing it,
so turn the vocal down, you know? [chuckles]
Although he works in a similar way, he was a very different person then.
Mm-hmm.
And lyrically…
-he was pretty poignant. -Yeah.
[Moulder] So it probably showed a little bit of vulnerability on his part about it.
But also, a credit to him that even if he was vulnerable…
He did it.
…he stepped up.
He did it himself.
With Trent, I don't know if people realize how important the lyrics are to him.
-It's the most important thing. -Yeah.
[Moulder] If he plays a track, he'll always put the lyrics in front of you.
The lyrics, to him, are obviously the reason for the track.
[Reznor] ♪ I focus on the pain ♪
♪ The only thing that's real ♪
It's not in the center of the track. It's panned off to one side.
[chuckles] Yeah, I told you, I want to be hiding in the track.
[distorted echoing] ♪ You could have it all ♪
♪ My empire of dirt ♪
-You've really messed up the sound. -[laughs]
It's distressed in how you're hearing it.
It's something you have to lean in to kind of…
listen, if you're interested.
Is there a lyric in the song
that especially sticks with you today?
The reason I like to shy away from talking about lyrics is
it can shed too much light on what my intent was.
To me, it's about your experience with that song and what it means to you
and how it feels to you, and I've had many songs ruined
by the writer telling me what they meant by that
or correcting what I thought the lyric was, which was way better.
But was it hard to figure out how you wanted to sing those words?
What are you getting at?
Are you tricking me into just doing…
-Talking about the lyrics. -[both chuckle]
["Hurt" bassline playing]
What I was going through around the writing of Downward Spiral
was not knowing who I was anymore.
I'd see myself as the kid in the bedroom
listening to records,
and I wasn't sure who the guy on stage was.
-[audience cheering] -[Reznor] You fucking pigs!
[band cheering]
That was getting distorted and becoming accentuated
and a caricature of self, I think.
Add that to someone ill-equipped
to deal with attention or fame.
I've always had a sadness and a sense of abandonment, I think, haunting me,
and never feeling like I fit in anywhere
and always feeling like an outsider.
It's not rational. It just happens often.
Maybe I'm the guy that needs a couple beers…
-I don't give a fuck. -…or whatever it might be
to understand who I am.
And, "Now I feel better," you know?
"Now I feel more confident in this new outfit I've got on."
It was a ripe scenario for your personality to distort.
That was the best fucking time I've ever had in my life.
Exploit it any way you want it. I don't give a fuck.
["Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails plays]
I was trying to find a purpose and salvation
and sense of place and just not to feel bad.
♪ I wear this crown of shit ♪
♪ Upon my liar's chair ♪
♪ Full of broken thoughts ♪
♪ I cannot repair ♪
[wind whistling effect playing]
[Hirway] The sound that the song actually begins with is this.
-[Reznor] A favorite sound of ours. -What is that?
[Reznor] There's a guy that tuned our studio, named Coco.
One of the machines he uses to tune the room
was this ancient-looking science-fiction box
that sent out different tune noises at different frequencies,
but it's a really beautiful sound.
We sampled those sounds and those became…
I use them all the time.
[wind whistling effect playing]
-[Hirway] Then there's this other layer. -[static buzzing effect playing]
I'd been thinking about sound design in films,
how it can make you uncomfortable by hiding some things in there
that subconsciously can make you feel a certain way,
because that's what the record was about.
[wind whistling effect playing]
I was very much inspired by the films of David Lynch.
Not so much what the music was doing,
but what sound was doing.
There's a radiator, and I feel like I'm going crazy.
Why is that? Oh, 'cause that humming sound in the room is super loud.
It miraculously could make you feel incredibly uncomfortable.
[chuckles]
It's not all meant to just repulse you,
but to be able to emotionally set the stage
for what I was trying to get across.
So we started laying in subliminal sounds throughout the whole record.
[discordant guitar notes clanging]
When the chorus comes in, there are a number of guitars
all playing the same thing.
We just would tune it to open strings
and overdub several passes.
What was important was that it felt naive
and it felt imprecise
and contribute to the narrative of the song,
which was, this isn't secure.
[twanging guitar notes echoing]
[string effects playing]
[Hirway] I loved the sound,
and I couldn't wrap my head around what it was,
and I still don't understand what it is.
[Reznor] I was actually thinking about this sound.
We've come up with a trick where we could take a note
on whatever instrument.
That sounds like strings, but I'm not…
Like violin, but I'm not sure if it was that.
Feed it for a second into, like, an infinite reverb,
and it gets locked into a tone
that sounds almost pipe organ-y a little bit.
Because it's not coming out of a synthesizer,
it's not quite in tune.
It's not quite right.
It has a…
It feels, um, human…
and that was meant to turn the lights up.
You've been underwater.
Bring you up to kind of emphasize the climax of the song.
[playing "Hurt"]
♪ What have I become? ♪
♪ My sweetest friend… ♪
I remember sitting at the piano,
and when the chorus of "What have I become…"
This just felt right, you know?
I got goose bumps now just thinking about it.
[song continues]
♪ You could have it all… ♪
I want you to feel a certain way.
It's not about amazing guitar solo.
Fantastic groove.
It's goose bumps. That's the part that matters the most.
♪ I will make you hurt… ♪
When I finished it, I'd had the artwork and everything.
Here's the album. [chuckles]
I think I said, "I'm sorry," because there's no single on there.
I don't think there's anything you can even play on the radio.
I thought this would be the self-indulgent record
off to the side,
-but it exploded. -[audience cheering]
[Hirway] The Downward Spiral came out in March 1994.
It was a critical and commercial hit.
It debuted at number two on Billboard charts.
[Reznor] I think I wrote good songs, but I tried to not make them as obvious.
There's hooks, but sometimes you don't hear them the first time.
You might have to work to listen. It requires more work.
You said that you wish you could sing like Bowie,
but then you actually…
You performed this song with David Bowie.
Yeah. Yeah.
[playing "Hurt"]
♪ I hurt myself today ♪
♪ To see if I still feel ♪
♪ I focus… ♪
I couldn't believe it was real. It really felt like…
how much better does it get than this?
♪ The needle tears a hole… ♪
Being able to stand on stage next to that guy,
you know, who's my hero…
That voice is singing this beautiful harmony
with that song I wrote in my bedroom.
…was…
just mind-blowing.
[both] ♪ What have I become? ♪
♪ My sweetest friend ♪
♪ Everyone… ♪
I haven't listened to that version of that for some time.
You know, it really felt…
validating.
[audience cheering]
[remixed voice screams]
I thought that maybe when I reached all these goals,
I'd find some sort of peace.
I didn't, and now it's like I'm more miserable now than I ever was.
My monster really is my own head right now.
I'm just trying to, uh, come to terms with some things.
I think what I do best is express myself through music,
but at the same time, it's a lot of reopening wounds,
and somehow the elusive happiness or contentedness
seems always a couple blocks away.
[playing "Hurt" piano melody]
You know, in the context of that album, I was exploring ways
to make pain go away.
After that record came out,
I had a moment, several years into addiction.
♪ What have I become… ♪
How did I… How did this happen?
♪ My sweetest friend… ♪
I mean, I realized that story I had kind of written
about someone self-destructing was…
I was doing all those things.
It summarizes a lot I've gone through.
Then, years later, "Hurt" gets another life
by Johnny Cash covering it.
[playing "Hurt"]
♪ I hurt myself today ♪
♪ To see if I still feel… ♪
[Hirway] When Johnny Cash's cover came out,
did your relationship to your lyrics change?
To a degree, yeah.
To hear it get juxtaposed
on top of this huge life
at a time in his life
where it took on additional significance
felt very meaningful.
♪ What have I become? ♪
♪ My sweetest friend ♪
♪ Everyone I know ♪
♪ Goes away in the end… ♪
[Reznor] At the time, I was unsure about my ability to write
and my relevance, and I felt adrift.
That song reared up again to kind of let me know
things will be okay.
It just felt like a friend almost, like a hug.
[song ends]
If you'd have asked me when I was in my 20s,
do I think I'll be playing the Nine Inch Nails in my 50s or even live,
you know, I…
I don't think you would have heard…
"Yes, for sure," you know, from me.
[audience cheering]
We usually end concerts with "Hurt,"
and we have for the last hundred years that we've been playing.
-[playing "Hurt"] -[audience cheering]
Now I've sang this countless times…
and I sing it differently because I've lived in it.
♪ My sweetest friend… ♪
And to be able to come up for air and look back,
"How did I turn into this?"
[song continues]
[song intensifies]
Having played that song countless times live…
I'm always in the moment of that.
I remember how I felt.
It always is quiet, and you feel like,
"I am making a connection with people."
For someone that doesn't feel that comfortable around people, it…
It's powerful.
[Hirway] And now here's "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails.
["Hurt" plays]
[song ends]