Nine Inch Nails & Children

[Halo Infinity]

I recall this being addressed on ETS before, and I'm wondering what most of you think about letting children of any age listen to Nine Inch Nails? Have your opinions changed over the years? And when I say children, I'm also referring to children as old as 12, and not just children that are 8 and under or 6 and under. I already know some of the opinions from those on NIN.com that might also be here too, because I brought it up there. So what do you think? When it comes to minors, would NIN be 13+ music? I do recall lots of people here saying that 11 year olds and 12 year olds shouldn't listen to NIN. As for teenagers, I still don't think any teenager is too young for NIN. I just don't see what's wrong with teenagers being into NIN.

[sheepdean]

I don't understand why someone who likes music shouldn't be allowed to listen to it - if an 8 year old decides they really love TDS, let them spin it as much as they want. Teaching them that swear words exist, and when they're acceptable, makes more sense than hiding them from your kids, so they use them inappropriately due to ignorance.

[Wretchedest]

What? No... i can understand like 12 and up, theyll get their hands on whatever regardless. Ive been there. But an 8 year old? An 8 year old should not be subjected to such intense depressing music as TDS. Ghosts... sure, theyd prolly find it boring, though. But TDS especially is a little hardcore. Your telling me the verdicts out on whether little timmy should be allowed to listen to Big Man with a Gun? What good would come of that?

[sheepdean]

If a kid LIKES it, why not? I'm not saying play them music they don't like, but many people find "depressing" music quite uplifting

[MAD]

Suck


EDIETS (my fav)


SICNH


TLBTB


TGD Remix .. old nuff?


There you have it. Nine Inch Nails and insane baby cuteness smeared all over this page!

[Wretchedest]

If a kid LIKES it, why not? I'm not saying play them music they don't like, but many people find "depressing" music quite uplifting

Its not about whether they like it or not. Its about there psychological preparedness, the possibility of imgesting something like the downward spiral and normalizing it. Tds runs the gammot of the worlds darkest emotional state. Its hardly something your supposed to "enjoy" it supposed to be uncomfortable and disturbing.
Hell, i got into it when i was fifteen, probably barely ready for something like that.

Its sort of like A Clockwork Orange. As a teen you get really into it and think its all edgy and trippy and deviant. But as you grow ip you realize how fucked up it really is. Big Man With a Gun, yeah let your toddler listen to that as much as he wants, see how he turns out. Because media and art dont impact our perceptions of reality or anything... it couldnt do that to a toddler. No.

[wizfan]

There's always Rockabye Baby.

[MAD]

Big Man With a Gun, yeah let your toddler listen to that as much as he wants, see how he turns out.

I'll post the results later.

I was raised with AC/DC and I'm glad that happened.

[sheepdean]

Its not about whether they like it or not. Its about there psychological preparedness, the possibility of imgesting something like the downward spiral and normalizing it. Tds runs the gammot of the worlds darkest emotional state. Its hardly something your supposed to "enjoy" it supposed to be uncomfortable and disturbing.
Hell, i got into it when i was fifteen, probably barely ready for something like that.

Its sort of like A Clockwork Orange. As a teen you get really into it and think its all edgy and trippy and deviant. But as you grow ip you realize how fucked up it really is. Big Man With a Gun, yeah let your toddler listen to that as much as he wants, see how he turns out. Because media and art dont impact our perceptions of reality or anything... it couldnt do that to a toddler. No.

If the kid doesn't understand the lyrics, does it have the same impact? Music is powerful, but I don't think listening to a song can corrupt someone in such an utter way, otherwise there'd be people everywhere who existed only within the genre of the music their parents loved, and only reflected those ideals.

[KrakenWakes]

Its the same reason why I'm more afraid of the dark than my 2 year old is. She doesn't have 30 years of movies and books to scare the hell out of her. To her it's just music.

For older kids, well... at 8 i was listening to the Misfits, the Circle Jerks, and Suicidal Tendencies on cassettes hidden under my bed and I never had any psychological issues. Other than a fear of the dark that is.

[Zipfinator]

Big Man With a Gun, yeah let your toddler listen to that as much as he wants, see how he turns out.

"Honey, he said his first words!"

(Read in a Baby Voice) "Iaam gunna cum all overr you..."

[M1ke]

I've had NIN on in the car with the kids in and they usually complain and tell me to change it.

[Wretchedest]

Man, back in the day, this thread was skewed completely the other way.... now I'm on my own...

[lady weetly]

Back in 1994 when I was a kid, my babysitter would play Broken and TDS on her walkman and I'd sometimes want to listen too. I didn't have a clue what the lyrics meant at that age so honestly I'd let my kids listen to whatever they want.

[Halo Infinity]

What? No... i can understand like 12 and up, theyll get their hands on whatever regardless.

What about having 10 year olds and 11 year olds listening to NIN? Would you be against that too? Don't get me wrong though, as I find myself in the middle of this debate, but I still understand why people wouldn't want children ages 8 and under listening to NIN. (Or any child in the single digits for that matter, so yes that could also include age 9.)

Man, back in the day, this thread was skewed completely the other way.... now I'm on my own...

I'm actually a bit surprised myself too. At least we both agree on minors listening to NIN at ages 12 and up not being a big deal at all.

[allegro]

When I was a kid, our mom had this album:



Which included songs like this:


Mom said, "don't sing that song around Grandma, okay?"

[con4cyn]

I was 12 when I discovered NIN, and other alternative rock I didn't grow up with before that. I already knew there were things my parents didn't want me to see or hear, which made it that much more enticing. Plus, it ushered me into my hormonal teens perfectly. I honestly, don't think I would have understood TDS if I was younger than 10. My parents divorced around that age, anyway, so I think it depends on what kind of environment the kids are given by that point.

[Harry Seaward]

Depends on the type of kid. If they're stupid, they'll just rock out to the cool noises. If they're smart, it may have an effect on their growth. NIN has some dark lyrics, if you're smart enough to pay attention to them.

[pequena]

If the kid doesn't understand the lyrics, does it have the same impact? Music is powerful, but I don't think listening to a song can corrupt someone in such an utter way, otherwise there'd be people everywhere who existed only within the genre of the music their parents loved, and only reflected those ideals.

This is an incredibly important point. I find this even with adults. My dad, for example, doesn't hear lyrics, it's all muddled to him, and he just enjoys it for the music he hears. I think if it's quality music then I wouldn't have an issue with it. I totally plan on sharing the music I think is fantastic with whatever kid(s) I have.

But like others said, I'm not about to shove it down their throat and if they don't like it or it freaks them out (like NIN did when I was 10-11) or they turn out not to be big into music () then that's cool too. They might always come back to it! Or go rummaging through mom's music stash.

And if they go about randomly singing inappropriate lyrics in public at a super young age (like I did, lololz) then...well, it'll probably be pretty funny.

[reznovka]

My little brother hates NIN...but he says that he can´t understand it and that´s the reason. He like stupid german popmusic.
But I think it´s ok for kids. Some songs like hurt or closer my be disturbing for kids, but most of the stuff should be fun for them.

[Indefinite_Cure]

When I was 5 I loved Closer and TDS (it had just come out) but I have to point out I didn't know a single word of English...

[Elke]

Its about there psychological preparedness, the possibility of imgesting something like the downward spiral and normalizing it. Tds runs the gammot of the worlds darkest emotional state. Its hardly something your supposed to "enjoy" it supposed to be uncomfortable and disturbing.
Hell, i got into it when i was fifteen, probably barely ready for something like that.

Like others have said: you don't understand what you hear until you're old enough to understand it. I'll give you a completely different example: as a child and even as a teenager I was terrified by The Black Cauldron (a little know Disney movie) because it had skelettons in it. I only watched it for the first time when I was well in my twenties and realized I had been afraid of nothing.
At the same time, I devoured books: Anthony Horowitz, Stephen King, Edgar Allen Poe, Umberto Eco, J.R.R. Tolkien... I read almost all the classics before I was 18. I once brought Anaïs Nin to school, and the teacher was shocked that my mother would let me read that (I was 14 at the time). We had art books in our living room with the darkest and most disturbing works of people like Goya and Bacon; and we listened to classical music as well as folk, Pink Floyd, Queen and Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. I know Lucy In the Sky by heart phonetically. I read all Shakespeare's plays in the original English when I was 15 - that's a lot of death and gore.
Of course that influenced me: all of those things influenced me. It has left me with a taste for the dark and the obscure, for the difficult and the artsy, yes. Nothing scared me like The Black Cauldron though, because I simply didn't get it. As a child, I got skelettons: skelettons are scary, they're dead people without their flesh. It's gross.

An eight year old will either like the album, or won't. An eight your old might get the vibe from some of the sounds (the screaming, the flies, the beatings) that this is scary. And an eight your old might scare the living daylights out of your parents by singing 'Iwannafokyoulikeanananimal' out of the blue. But no way can an eight year old understand all the emotional rawness of that album, all the implications of the lyrics. You said it yourself: you didn't really get it at 15. I didn't really get it until I was 28 or so, and even then... barely.

Parents should always pay attention to what their child sees, hears, reads... but I'm not convinced that Flo Rida and Fergie are not infinitely more dangerous to a child than Nine Inch Nails.

[reznovka]

Parents should always pay attention to what their child sees, hears, reads... but I'm not convinced that Flo Rida and Fergie are not infinitely more dangerous to a child than Nine Inch Nails.

there´s no need to say anything. *sign*

[Halo Infinity]

There you have it. Nine Inch Nails and insane baby cuteness smeared all over this page!

I've seen all of those videos before. In that case, mission accomplished. (I would've used a laughing emoticon if there was one here.) I actually found a video of a girl singing Every Day Is Exactly The Same.

[Dinki Di]

This is my opinion, but playing some certain NIN songs for anyone that is not old enough to understand it is not the best idea. NIN is not simple pop music, but has dark lyrics and themes that need to be explained to a young child. I would never play something like Closer to a child younger than 10 or so. Downright irresponsible if you ask me. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the music would be appropriate, however playing TDS all the way through? No way.

[Kamelion]

Of course it's fine. Our kids all know and listen to NIN. We do skip the track if something like the uncensored version of Closer comes on, but in the main there's no reason to be weird about it.

[littlemonkey613]

I started listening to NIN when I was 10 and it made me obsessed with good music. I only payed attention to the aesthetics (like you would expect of any child) and didn't even know what he was taking about (nor did I care) I see nothing wrong it. I mean honestly its not worse than the sexist tripe bubblegum pop brainwashes kids with.

[nin5in]

The instrumentals are fine. But anything other than the instrumentals, no, no, and no.

[Tea]

I loved Pretty Hate Machine when I was 5/6 years old. My brother hated it though, because I would steal his cassette tapes and destroy them. When you're that young, it's just music, and none of it means anything. At 6, the first CD I bought with my own money was Prince, which included lyrics like "horny pony, get off", and I was gifted Cibo Matto's album at age 7 (a horse's ass is better than yours!). Remembering back to all of it, I think it opened me musically far more than any "safe" music would. The curse words and sexual innuendos, even if I understood, did nothing to influence my behavior.

Parents know their kids and what they can take. I don't believe, especially, in shutting out sexual art like it's a bad thing. It's nature and something children should start learning about so they can make better decisions, and I'm glad my parents let me watch R rated movies that had sex, not severe violence.

[peanoot3]

I think opening children up to different music is a great thing. I think that a person should show them music that's not bubblegum pop, and have them discover their own personal tastes; as opposed to letting them following fads they don't want to follow. For a small child, I would play Ghosts, and just raise the emotional level a bit by the time their age progresses. By the time they're older, they'll remember that mommy and daddy used to play that one album with the backwards 'N' on it, and realize, "Damn! Nine Inch Nails kicks ass!" Then, they go through the fanboy phase, buying hordes of merchandise, listening to nothing but NIN, and forcing the music on their friends. Eventually, they get into artists associated with 'Nails and like them too. NIN has opened me up to so much music I never knew back then that I would appreciate now. NIN has made me musically more mature, and has opened my mind. I think playing the music for a small child will make them realize at a young age what kind of music is out there. Small 7-year-old's are listening to music on the radio that says, "Slap dem big booty bitches!", and their parents think, "Well, it's on the radio, so no harm in that." I would rather my child want to fuck someone like an animal (though I wouldn't play Closer for a young child), than "sell the cocaine, run from the po-po, and meet with ma homies and smoke dat shit."

Nine Inch Nails also has a pop element in some songs that are irresistable to bob your head or tap your foot to. Even if the lyrics are self destructive and violent, the child doesn't understand and just enjoys what they hear. As a young child, I was restrained from music, and I think to myself every day, "I really wish my parents showed me music that was out there." Playing music like NIN would just broaden their perspective, no matter how obscure the songs are to a child.