How do you interpret The Fragile?

[EndlessLoveless]

Either way, to each thier own. You can put copy of a on your 'ultimate' fragile mix for all i care. Deep is just not going on mine. To be honest, i dont even have the still stuff on it, even though it sounds fitting. Trust me, i would love if AATCHB was on the fragile......but its not. Mine is just a combo of the vinyl version with appendage. All i want is the album (vinyl tracklist) mixed in 5.1, along with appendage. And another cd with the lost fragile songs all of that good stuff that you hope exists.....

[Halo Infinity]

Happy 14th birthday to The Fragile. Perhaps we can find some clues in The Fragile era commercials being played in all their glory?

[henryeatscereal]

^The album is about flowers and noise that's obvious...

[Dustin Burleson]

happy birthday Fragile!

so this week i've completely immersed myself in this behemoth purely to celebrate the greatness of it.....nothing more..just jamming the fuck out of it..

so i started where we all mostly start, with the orig copy of fragile that i heard for the first time, a cd my grandma took me to buy when i was like 15 in some mall in little rock arkansas because i was visiting her and i was away from texas and basically told her 'look, i need to get this!' 'this is important' (this would be the first nin purchase i had ever made) although i had broken and fixed and of course knew of TDS, but i didnt have a copy of it at the time for some reason...mostly just knew the singles..i did know that i liked NIN though...still upon purchase i wasnt sure what i was in for, even the packaging signified a difference from previous artwork put forward, it was like not rough or 'dirty' or specific like the water/fire of broken and fixed, cool tones and out of focus flowers ( in my head i was 'cool') in those days you had to carry around your cd player and batteries...(i had those waiting in the car) the drive from little rock back to my grandmas was about an hr +, so i got to take in Left, in its entirety....my cousin was with me and was trying to listen to his stuff that he bought so he wasnt bothering me at all...this shit WAS BLOWING MY MIND...essentially i give fragile alot of credit for expanding my own idea of rock music and rock sounds, and what was possible and where it was going...i never had doubts about this album, from the start i liked it and basically it only got better from that point on...i listened to that for the rest of the summer and after that went back to my normal activities and other music....either way, that shit was an eye opener and basically flipped off the current scene and style of rock at that time and made themselves look immensely cooler and smarter. everything was turned on its head, sprawling double album, complex live show, highly detailed video and art work..you could tell they loved what they did and cared for the product, it wasnt hasty or rushed...it was exactly as they had planned. the entire process is so fragile because one thing can screw it all up, bad art, bad single, shitty live show, bad sales, marketing, ect ,ect....

flash forward to this week,
i listen to the orig copy
..im like...'ok thats cool, but my sound system deserves better'

i go and turn on the fragility era videos and tour stuff and watch that for a bit
..im like..'ok, now we're getting somewhere'

i go and download Fragile in 5.1 and slam that for a few days
...im like 'yeah this record is fucking impeccable'

i go and download Fragile Vinyl rip
...im like ' this fucker can sound better???? no way, this is amazing'

at this moment im not sure whether i enjoy the 5.1 version or the Vinyl rip more, but they both sound fantastic on my sound system
definitely my favorite nine inch nails record, and definitely worthy of elite status in terms of a 'rock record'

my interpretation is similar to some of the things ive read on here

essentially ALOT of it is in the title its self.

foreshadowing, trent is a master of this

trent sees the direction hes going, he realizes what is at stake, where his career will end up, how things will play out for his band if he continues down this path....
the path isnt good
the path isnt bad
its definitely leading somewhere he doesnt want to be though
rather than shutting it all down, turning the machine off and walking away,
he creates ways to keep it alive and also maintain his idea that he can still fix it, if he has the time. (his psyche, his image, his entire well being, his band, his life)
the options and ways he takes arent fullproof and need constant maintenance, and that is a weary task to constantly uphold
...so on it goes, his entire everything remains intact, but on the cusp of destruction...everything is Fragile, everything must be handled with care otherwise it will all come crumbling down...
all the songs are merely pieces, describing this 'dance', if you will, and the struggle to continue it. there is no order. just choices ....choose left, choose right. its up to you, but just know the decision you make is important and will determine the next course of action...

ultimately after the fragile tour and all that followed, trent went on hiatus and got sober, and tried to 'better himself'..seems like he knew all along where he was headed..

W_T_ went on to extrapolate the ins and outs and understanding and realization of that process further...which in itself is genius.


thanks again for 'the Fragile' TR

[utterben]

Today is a great day.

I rarely listen to the entire album, beginning to end, both discs, but when I do, the uplift from Part 1 to Part 2 hits me harder each time.

Disc 1 is dark, troubled, tumultuous, heavy-going.

Disc 2 is a sexy disco.


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[butter_hole]

Just a note for people looking at early tracklists and coming away bemused: those early tracks might have started and ended differently. La Mer would probably work as track #2 after Somewhat Damaged if the track started with a huge drone ala TDTWWA...

Ah, to be present at those sessions..

[utterben]

I kept forgetting to mention this, but perhaps it isn't so far fetched to think that In Two might have some connection to The Fragile as well as the two discs representing NIN being broken in two.

That's a cool-as-fuck theory. I like your thinking.

[seasonsinthesky]

Just a note for people looking at early tracklists and coming away bemused: those early tracks might have started and ended differently. La Mer would probably work as track #2 after Somewhat Damaged if the track started with a huge drone ala TDTWWA...

would it, though? i can't say the transition is spectacular as is, but that's part of the point — it sounds strange, unfitting, a mish-mash segue between two songs that really don't go together at all. i'd suspect "La Mer" began the same way and just started immediately once SD stopped, and it was just as confrontational and angular as some of the others on the record ("Pilgrimage" -> "No, You Don't," for instance).

and this is after the end of SD was rewritten to accommodate its opening position!

[Halo Infinity]

That's a cool-as-fuck theory. I like your thinking.

Thank you, that's very flattering. It just occurred to me as I was also thinking of the particular lyric in Now I'm Nothing where he said, "All that I could do! Is break myself in two!" back in 1991, which could sort of count as the beginning of the Broken era as Trent was working on Broken at the time. When I look at it this way, it is Trent realizing that he's obviously Broken, but it is the start of him destroying himself, as shown in Wish, Last, and Gave Up. It also makes me like to view Gave Up and Mr Self Destruct as the top of The Downward Spiral. And by the bottom, which is Hurt, Trent is finally broken up in two. His Left and his Right side. He really is a genius in terms of story-telling if he really thought all that through and built up on it from 1991 to 1999 and so forth.

It's also interesting how the ending of Hurt sounds like a crash, which finally breaks him up into two parts. And it's just getting harder and harder for him to tell them apart, considering how they overlap each other so well.

[utterben]

Thank you, that's very flattering. It just occurred to me as I was also thinking of the particular lyric in Now I'm Nothing where he said, "All that I could do! Is break myself in two!" back in 1991, which could sort of count as the beginning of the Broken era as Trent was working on Broken at the time. When I look at it this way, it is Trent realizing that he's obviously Broken, but it is the start of him destroying himself, as shown in Wish, Last, and Gave Up. It makes me like to view Gave Up and Mr Self Destruct as the top of The Downward Spiral. And by the bottom, which is Hurt, Trent is finally broken up in two. His Left and his Right side. He really is a genius in terms of story-telling if he really thought all that through and built up on it from 1991 to 1999 and so forth.

It's also interesting how the ending of Hurt sounds like a crash, which finally breaks him up into two parts. And it's just getting harder and harder for him to tell them apart, considering how they overlap each other so well.

Nice. That all makes a lot of sense. I often think Ripe (With Decay) is a sly way of saying "I'm alright now... I've done it... (But I'm still full of residual poison.)" That's the best I can word it, if it even makes sense at all.

Could talk for hours about themes on The Fragile. I only read recently that he isolated himself in a desolate house by the sea to force himself to write. Quite a bleak time, I imagine. But a wonderful result.


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[Halo Infinity]

I only read recently that he isolated himself in a desolate house by the sea to force himself to write. Quite a bleak time, I imagine. But a wonderful result.

It makes listening to The Fragile more interesting right after knowing that because The Fragile is the best Nine Inch Nails album for me to listening to when it comes to helping me cope with loneliness and the confusion that comes along with it.

[demo]

I'm sure someone has posted about Ezrin's involvement with the sequencing, but as a reminder, this was what he said (found at ninwiki.com):
""Trent was anything but brain addled at the time we were completing the Fragile. He was brilliant and feverishly recording and mixing in 3 rooms at the same time to complete the project on time for its scheduled release. What he had realized was that he'd created a work that was much longer than was practical to release and that wasn't quite hanging together the way he had hoped when he created its individual parts. Remember, there are thousands of bits of music and lyric that went into this record and they were recorded asynchronously. So he called me for help. Luckily, I had just come off another project and was able to head to New Orleans immediately—supposedly for a few days.My job was to take all of this work and reorganize it to more practically and effectively tell the story that originally generated all these bits. Sort of like editing a film. Trent had "shot" more than he needed and it wasn't hanging together the way he wanted. But he was also tied to the other studios recording and mixing while this was going on so he needed someone he trusted to come in and take over the "editing" process and help his "film" hang together better.
And it was a totally thrilling process. We had SO much stuff and so much to say but we needed to tighten it up and review the pacing etc. So we were literally working round the clock for what turned out to be weeks until we finally nailed it and I was able to go home.
I loved working with him - and his whole team in fact - on this project. It just increased my respect for him as an artist and a man."
— Bob Ezrin"

[Dustin Burleson]

Flood and Alan Moulder - the engineer/producer combo behind two of the most celebrated and coveted double albums "The Fragile' and "Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness' both have their hands all over both of those albums...

[Akahige]

I don't think Flood worked on The Fragile.

[Dustin Burleson]

he may be uncredited, but i remember moulder referencing that he and flood were working on both and bouncing things off each other during that entire process on both albums, plus the fact flood had produced both phm and tds, no doubt moulder was helping flood do mellon collie and flood was helping alan do the fragile (it was like two years or something)

[eversonpoe]

he may be uncredited, but i remember moulder referencing that he and flood were working on both and bouncing things off each other during that entire process on both albums, plus the fact flood had produced both phm and tds, no doubt moulder was helping flood do mellon collie and flood was helping alan do the fragile (it was like two years or something)

mellon collie came out in 1995...the fragile came out in 1999. that's four years, not two. also, where has it been stated that flood worked on any part of the fragile?

[demo]

As far as I can tell, Flood had 0 involvement with The Fragile. He's not even thanked in the credits.

[StockAvuryah]

Huh.

That's interesting you view WITT as exceedingly desperate. I've always heard that song as not just the most defiant on the Fragile, but perhaps in his entire catalogue (until that 'Everything' abomination came along ). That was the first song he ever did where I thought "Oh man, homeboy might actually "make it through somehow" after all..."

I was reading this thread, and it's really good, lots of interesting interpretations of The Fragile, but Everything is beautiful. It's a great song. That's it.

I always found it interesting that both sides of the fragile (pretty much) end with "I can still feel you"

I'd add, now that Deviations 1 has come out, that the only lyrics on Deviations 1 are "I can still feel you", on Underneath It All.