Originally Posted by
Trent Reznor
A lot of it is marketing. MTV is telling you this is what is cool. Listen to what is cool. I think that the whole situation has made music less art-y and put more emphasis on music as a product. If you buy an album today and it has two good songs on it, it's okay. Before, if you bought an album and it had two bad songs on it, well...it's still an okay album. You got your money's worth. I can't tell you how many CDs we get from bands who want to open for us, you've never heard of them so you put it on and the first song is not bad. Then, well, that one sounds like the same song, sounds like that song...with CDs you can instantly hit that little button and skip to the next track. Albums, at least, you had to go to the trouble of moving the needle. With an album you had this big piece of art, something on the inside and the vinyl. You know, it was a cool thing. CDs are ugly little pieces of shit; art's gone. What really made me think about this was discovering a few records I hadn't really listened to, like: Bowie's Low album, or Hunky Dory, Iggy Pop stuff I had missed. You take a record like Low, or Hunky Dory where every song, to me, is awesome, different and challenging. I wish I could write one song that is as good as any song on that album. Then you compare it to what is out today. I hate to think in a retro mindset. You know, "the Beatles were the best thing.." Fuck the Beatles, I hated people who were always going on about the fuckin' Beatles. They're dead. They're ugly now. Get them out of my sight. There isn't much coming out, it seems to me, that has much depth. It's based a lot on what the trend of the second is. And I realize that we are dangerously close to that same thing. Whatever.