In 2010, aside from that niche of music that I have no interest in - Black Eyed Peas territory, disposable pop stuff - there's almost an incentive to go back to making music as adventurous and groundbreaking as you can, because nobody gets a big hit anymore.
— Trent Reznor
My experience with record labels throughout my career has generally fallen into wishing I could do things that they're not built to do, whether it be arguing about having a nicer package - because I do believe some people care about that - to trying to always bank on art-versus-the-easy-commerce route; there's always been headbutting involved.
The 'Downward Spiral' album was a record all about beating everybody up - and then 'Hurt' was like a coda saying maybe I shouldn't have done that. But to make the song sound impenetrable because I thought it was a little too vulnerable, I tried to layer it in noise.
I was excited by the process of Pandora, which I still think is a decent product. Not as great in actuality as it sounds. After the first hour, its weaknesses start to show up.
Now that I have a thousand albums in my car all the time, I listen to more music. I was too lazy; I always had the same five discs in there. I'd never think to change it.
I'd rather not get into what I'm talking about lyrically. I think it's impossible not to demystify a song when saying what it's about. Music and art can be damaged severely by too much information; I say that as somebody that has participated in that.
I tend to not listen to my own music when I'm not working on it. No real reason other than it's nice to get away from it.
When I'm writing music, I'm not playing a character. I'm not Alice Cooper or Gene Simmons or someone like that, who has acknowledged that they are writing music for a character.
I like the idea of working in an album-sized chunk, you know, and I never looked at Nine Inch Nails as a project that would be a hit-driven, single-based kind of thing.
I'm a lot less precious than I used to be about putting things out, for better or for worse. The result of a public that has a very high consumption rate and turnover rate is people listen to more music but spend less time with individual bits of music.
It's a humbling thing, having kids. One of my sons came to rehearsals, and now he says Daddy's job is 'go play loud music.'
When I'm on stage, the songs that we've chosen to play from the back catalog are things that still resonate with me, and matter to me. And the songs that I couldn't be a part of, we don't play anymore.
The idea of politics is just so uninteresting to me - I've never paid much attention to it. I don't believe things can really change. It doesn't matter who's president. Nothing really gets resolved. I don't know. I guess that's not the right attitude to take.
I lived a fairly average, anonymous small-town life till I got the idea to do Nine Inch Nails. Then I locked myself in a studio for a year, and then got off the tour bus two years after that, and I didn't know who I'd turned into.
To me, rock music was never meant to be safe. I think there needs to be an element of intrigue, mystery, subversiveness. Your parents should hate it.
Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and 'clean' versions be made for them to carry.
If there used to be 100 people at a major working on a record, now there are 18, but they're the good ones. There's a lean, mean hunger.
If you can use a search engine, you can find any piece of music that's been recorded for free. I'm not saying that's right, but it's a fact, and I'm surprised that more people don't accept or acknowledge that and try to adapt in some way.
In my life, I was always floating around the edge of the dark side and saying what if take it a little bit too far, and who says you have to stop there, and what's behind the next door. Maybe you gain a wisdom from examining those things. But after a while, you get too far down in the quicksand.
What I was concerned about when I wrote the 'Downward Spiral' record was being a self-centred destructive force. The point was tearing down everything in a search for something else.
I can still make a living with touring. And maybe you buy a t-shirt. And I would rather 10 million people get my record and listen to it for free than 500,000 that I coerced to pay $15 for it, you know?
I've watched with a kind of wary eye how gaming has progressed. I was there at the beginning with Pong in the arcade, and a lot of my great childhood memories were around a 'Tempest' machine.
When I return to the writing process after being away from it for a while, the first part of it always is being honest with myself: What am I into right now? Is it rock bands and guitars, is it noise, is it dance beats and electronics? Is it space, is it clutter?
I'd much rather be worrying about playing that note in tune, and picking out the best way to arrange the song, rather than thinking about pricing for the download. It's not art.
I need boundaries. In the modern studio there are a bunch of instruments around me, and I can simulate anything I can't play, so sometimes the palette feels too big.
Nine Inch Nails was born out of Cleveland, Ohio, with me and a friend in a studio working on demos at night. Got a record deal with a small, little label, went on tour in a van, and a couple years later found that somehow we touched a nerve, and that first record resonated with a bunch of people.
I think the whole aspect of social networking is vulgar and repulsive in a lot of ways. But I also see why it's appealing - I've had that little high you get from posting stuff online. But then you think, 'Did I need to say that?' I've explored that enough to know to stay kind of quiet these days.
When I was 25, people used to say to me that having kids would change you, and I'd roll my eyes.
I aspire to make a record that sounds better 10 listens in than it does after two, and still, at 50 listens, you're picking out things that add a depth and a thoughtfulness to it; there's enough in there that you can still be extracting pieces out of it.
My dad and I are best friends. He's pretty much responsible for the way I turned out. He would provide a little artistic inspiration here and there in the form of a guitar, stuff like that.
I'm very much aware of the dangers of becoming a cliche. Mr. Anger, someone who gets meaner, angrier on record.
I like the idea of subversively communicating with people... so that you make people see things in different ways.
Balance is good, because one extreme or the other leads to misery, and I've spent a lot of my life at one of those extremes.
For me, 'The Social Network' isn't about Facebook. It certainly isn't about how people use it. It's about a flawed character and his pursuit of that grand idea that defines him and validates his life and how far he'll go to get it, and the repercussions that come as a result of that - what he gives up in the process.
It's easy to get lost in the shuffle, and just enticing people to hear the music for free doesn't mean that much when everyone else is essentially doing the same thing on MySpace, or wherever.
A lot of what I've done as Nine Inch Nails has been governed by fear. I was trying to keep the songs in a framework that was tough, and I learnt a lot from Jesus and Mary Chain about how to bury nice pop songs in unlistenable noise - the idea being if you can get behind that wall, you find there's a pearl inside.
Spotify - I met those guys before they launched in America and was wildly excited about the idea. 'Wow, this is all the music in the world, for a flat fee.'
People want to listen to a lot of music and do whatever they want with it. They don't want DRM, they don't want subscriptions. They don't want a player that only can do this but can't do that and you only have one copy. They don't want that. You know? I don't want that.
When David Fincher called me up a few years ago and said, 'Hey, I'd like you to score this film 'The Social Network,' I said, 'I'm flattered, but I really don't have any real experience scoring films, and I'd rather not screw it up on a high-profile project. And I like you and I don't want to compromise our friendship.'
I've attended many concerts where I felt let down and I was wishing it would be something else. Not that it's their duty to please me, but at the same time, I think a lot about what it's like through the eyes of the consumer, the fan. I want not to pander to the audience, but to be aware of them.
I spent a long time experimenting, saying, 'Here's a record that's free, or $5 if you want a nice version or $250 if you'd like a really nice coffee-table thing.' Everything felt like the right thing to do at the time and then six months later would feel tired. And I would feel tired. So that's one reason for returning to a major label.
The first set of lyrics for the first songs I ever wrote, which are the ones on 'Pretty Hate Machine,' came from private journal entries that I realized I was writing in lyric form.
I think early on in my career, I was heavily inspired by bands like Throbbing Gristle and Test Dept, and films of David Lynch, for example, where the soundscape plays a very important role in the listening experience.
After coming from a major label, I realized the entire business has been decimated, and you can't look to labels to try to figure it out because they don't even use the technology, and they're oblivious to how people consume music these days.
There's always been an element of 'right time, right place' to Nine Inch Nails. When we stepped onstage at Woodstock '94, I could sense it. I get goosebumps thinking about it now. Like, 'I don't know how we did this, but somehow we've touched a nerve.'
My life has been many examples of shortsighted goals that I thought would fix things. You know, if there's something broken inside me, if there's a hole in there, I thought: If I could just write a good song someday, then I'd be OK. You know, if I could just be on stage in front of people I'd never seen before and be validated by them.
When your culture comes from watching TV every day, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. None of that happened where I was. You're almost taught to realize it's not for you.
I think the reason I was 23 before I ever wrote a song was that I was afraid of testing myself. What would I do if I discovered I didn't have anything to say?
I've always been into computers. When I was getting out of high school and forming my identity musically, all of it was really coming into the fold, computers and drum machines. It felt like, you know, I'm in the right place at the right time. I liked the collision.
Any time I sit down and write music, the first part of that is always centering myself and thinking about who I currently am.
