Original subtitles

I hurt myself today.

The thing about Hurt, more than any other song I've written, when I wrote

felt alone, you know?

Lost, but things will be okay, you know?

And you're okay.

Trent Reznor started making music as Nine Inch Nails in 1988.

His second album, 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.

It feels like somebody kind of walking around the rubble, having a chance to

maybe feel a reflection.

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

own life to finish the downward spiral.

I'm Rishi Kesh, your way.

This is Song Exploder.

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. It would be like Pink Floyd, The Wall.

The music felt like a mystery.

that you needed to unravel.

I could project into it what I was feeling. And what I was hearing seemed

it was written for me, about me.

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

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

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.

It made me feel good to take these feelings I had.

Sadness, desperation, punching a wall, the 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.

Unexpectedly, it started to catch on with people.

We toured quite a bit on Pretty Hate Machine, the first album.

There was an agenda at the time to not be mainstream.

I want to bend you to come to me rather than me to compromise to go to you.

But there was some 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

Should it be more like that thing?

I have to be true to what I think is right, at whatever expense that comes

I know what the next record is, and I knew the title was A Dollar Spiral.

It had an elaborate kind of storyline for it. I had a timeline written down in

notebook. Here's the arc of the story.

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 a reason.

With the story of the Downward Spiral kind of at its conclusion, The record

starts to get manic and abstract, hallucinogenic even, and madness to sit

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

and longing that might make the whole record feel...

more powerful and interesting.

So I got the original tracks from the tape, and it's really different from

the actual final song is. There is a main piano part running through it that

isn't actually in the final song.

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, really.

I remember singing the 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.

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 would have guessed 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 it over there.

Although he works in a way, he was a very different person then.

And lyrically, he was pretty poignant.

Yeah.

So he 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 and he did it himself.

I don't know if people realise how important lyrics are to him. Yeah.

the most important thing if ever he plays you a track he'll always put the

lyrics down in front of you the lyrics to him are obviously the reason for the

track i focus on the pain

the only thing that's real

it's not even in the center of the track it's panned off to one side i told you

i want to be hiding in the track

You've really messed up the sound.

It's distressed in how you're hearing it. It's something you have to lean in

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

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. 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?

What are you tricking me into just doing?

Talking about the lyrics.

What I was going through around the writing of Downward Spiral was not

knowing who I was anymore.

I'd seen myself as the kid in the bedroom listening to records, and I

sure who the guy on stage was.

That was getting distorted and becoming accentuated in the 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. Oh,

feel better. 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. I don't give a fuck.

I was trying to find a purpose and salvation and a sense of place and just

to feel bad.

I wear this crown of shit

Upon my liar's chair

Full of broken thoughts

I cannot read

The sound that the song actually begins with.

A favorite sound of ours.

What is that?

There's a guy that tuned our studio named Coco. One of the machines he uses

tune the room was this ancient -looking science fiction box that just sent out

different tune noises at different frequencies.

But it's a really beautiful sound. We sampled those sounds, and those

I still use them all the time.

And then there's this other layer.

I'd been thinking about sound design in films and how it could make you feel

uncomfortable by hiding some things in there that subconsciously could make you

feel a certain way, because that's what the record was about.

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? Look at that

humming sound in the room. It's super loud.

It miraculously could make you feel incredibly uncomfortable.

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.

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.

I loved this sound, and I could never wrap my head around what it was, and I

still don't understand what it is.

I was actually thinking about this sound.

We've come up with a trick where we could take a note on whatever instrument

is. That sounds like strings, like violin, but I'm not sure if it was that.

Feed it for a second into like an infinite reverb.

I think it's locked into a kind of tone that sounds almost...

pipe organy a little bit. Because it's not coming out of a synthesizer, it's

quite in tune, it's not quite bright, it has a... It feels human.

And that was meant to turn the lights up.

You've been underwater.

It should bring you up to kind of emphasize the climax of the song.

What have I...

I remember sitting at the piano and when the chorus of What Have I Become,

this just felt right, you know?

I got goosebumps right now just thinking about it.

I want you to feel a certain way.

It's not about...

Amazing guitar solo.

Fantastic groove.

It's goosebumps.

That's the part that matters the most.

When I finished it, I had the artwork and everything.

Here's the album.

And I think I said, I'm sorry, you know, because there's no single on there, you

know. I don't think there's anything you can even play on the radio.

You know, I thought this would be the self -indulgent.

record off to the side, but it exploded.

The Downward Spiral came out in March 1994.

It was a critical and commercial hit. It debuted at number two on the Billboard

charts.

I think I wrote good songs, but I tried to not make them as obvious.

There's hooks that you can't, sometimes you don't hear them the first time

around, and you might have to work to listen. It requires a bit more work.

You said that you wish you could sing like Bowie.

But then you actually performed this song with David Bowie. Yeah, yeah.

I

couldn't

believe it was real. It really felt like, how much better does it get than

you know?

Being able to stand on stage next to that guy, who's my hero, that voice of

singing, this beautiful harmony with that song I wrote in my bedroom, was

mind -blowing.

I haven't lived that version of that for quite some time.

You know, it really felt validating.

And I thought that maybe when I reached all these goals, I'd find some sort of

peace. And I didn't. You know, 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...

come to terms with some things. I think what I do best is express myself through

music. But at the same time, there's a lot of reopening wounds and somehow the

elusive happiness or contentment seems always a couple blocks away.

You know, in the context of that album, I was exploring ways to make pain go

away.

After it 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'd kind of written about someone self

-destructing was I was doing all those things.

Summarizes, it's a lot I've gone through.

Then years later, Pert gets another life by Johnny Cash covering it.

I hurt myself today to see

if I still feel.

When Johnny Cash's cover came out, did your relationship to your own 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

At the time, I was unsure about my ability to write and my relevance, and I

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.

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 don't think you

would have heard yes, for sure, you know, from me.

We usually end concerts with hurt, and we have for the last 100 years that

been playing.

Now I've sang this countless times, and I sing it differently because I've lived

in it.

Let's see this friend.

And to be able to come up for air and look back, how did I turn into this?

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's

And now, here's Hurt by Nine Inch Nails.

Try to kill.

my sweetest friend everyone I

know goes away in the end

The state of time The feelings

disappear You are someone

else I am still right

My sweetest friend.

Everyone I know goes away.