Not So Pretty Now is still one of the best NIN songs ever.
Not So Pretty Now is still one of the best NIN songs ever.
I’ll choose “I’m Looking Forward To Joining You, Finally” for $300, please.
Answer there, “It has drums. It’s a cure for insomnia. It’s the worst song on The Fragile and NIN’s worst.” At a close second, we have “Running.”
“Capital G” is one of my favorites from YZ (along with Meet Your Master, The Great Destroyer, and In This Twilight). Different strokes, I guess?
I wouldn’t think so but is it controversial to say “In Two” is by far the best song from HM?
Last edited by Swykk; 05-18-2018 at 12:17 PM.
We do disagree on this but I think that’s a testament to how diverse the fan base is mindset wise.
I dont know about absolute worst, but I can't stand the warning. Borrrring. I think the only reason it was played non stop for as long as it was is because TR needed to give his voice a break for a few minutes at that point in the show.
In Two is by far the best song from HM.
Purest Feeling is fun cheese from a young inexperienced man
I'm Looking Forward to Joining You Finally is a a heartfelt vulnerable goodbye to TR's grandmother and can hit hard when you lose someone you love. It's not a song you listen to for fun.
Capital G is sung intentionally awkward with fake hip-hop swagger and is meant to sound like it's coming from the mouth of a doofus.
My answer to the worst NIN track of all time is Running.
I love Year Zero's vocals and every song on Year Zero is at least 9/10 .
Dude just listen to Survivalism's verses, how can you hate those vocals it's so powerful.
NINs best live years begun during the with teeth era. Watching a junkie stumbling around the stage always gave me zero enjoyment.
I can definitely feel where you're coming from.
However, there was a palpable energy at the TDS shows that i've yet to see replicated. it's hard to explain.
It was fucking incredible. i caught those shows when i was 14-15, and my age at the time MIGHT be part of it.
Interestingly enough, i will sort of double down on what you are saying in a way: as incredible as the TDS shows were, Lights in the Sky was just about as good.
The track titles for Bad Witch are horrible.
Youre saying Trent and company were stumbling idiots during TDS arena tour?...
not saying they didn’t indulge (I’m sure they did), but the one show I saw was awesome and intense. They were younger too, so youthful energy and what not. Comparing that to modern day Marilyn Manson is rediculous.
I still think Complication is the worst NIN song of all....its soooo fuuuucking boooring and repetitive.....id honestly like it more if it sounded like how it ended. Thankfully, The New Flesh and I'm Looking Forward are the 2 songs to follow, so not all is lost
MotP's unused video is far better than the released one
The Beavis and Butthead version is my personal favorite.
I am too poor to be a "proper" Nine Inch Nails fan. Lately, it just feels like a circle jerk on how much money you've spent or could spend.
At least the music has been amazing.
I know what you mean. A lot of this has gone on the credit card for me or has been given to me by supportive parents. I think the last couple decades have been a really unfortunate time for a lot of people economically, and I feel bad for anyone who couldn't participate yesterday for totally legitimate financial reasons. Really, I couldn't afford the tickets either, but if I lived within my means I wouldn't have much of a life. So, it's debt for now on special occasions.
I guess there's also the $80 Fragile Deviations set which still seems kind of pricey for something that came with no deluxe packaging of any kind, and didn't have the option of a digital download through retailers. An unusual item in the discography, but I guess it's still an example.
I’m guessing @Jon was more referring to the buying of merchandise?...
And I agree to an extent. Some recent posts were “while I was standing in line for 6 hours I picked up a $50 poster, t shirt for $80, hoodie for $150, etc.”. I was never a huge collector, but did my fair share. I’d buy it and it would end up just sitting in a drawer or closet forever. Just not into that aspect of NIN (or any band really) at this stage of life I guess. It shouldn’t make us “bad” fans though.
I'm a cheapskate when it comes to merch
The only thing I ever bought in my 11 years of attending shows is 2013 Tour NIN t-shirt, which became my designated rock concert wear.
Thanks for extending this conversation out, @ManBurning. To clarify my thinking, "bad" for me is largely fueled by mediocrity. Pre-2005, the songs the casual music fan associated with NIN were - whether you like them or not - interesting. Head Like A Hole and Closer are long and complicated songs with unusual choruses, unique riffs, and more going on than your average rock/industrial/whatever-genre-you-like song. Down In It was a weird Skinny Puppy-inspired rap. March of the Pigs was fucking chaos. Wish is a fairly standard song objectively speaking, but it was super unexpected from the Pretty Hate Machine band.
Ever since With Teeth, it seems like every album has to come with at least one extremely generic, radio friendly rock song. I feel like The Hand That Feeds, The Beginning of the End, and 1,000,000 sound like they could have been written by any random band on the scene, and that's very much not I want from Nine Inch Nails. To me, that's "bad." It doesn't necessarily mean any individual aspect of the song is bad - it just means it brings down the catalog as a whole. This is especially true when the song does catch on, because now I probably have to hear The Hand That Feeds at every NIN show for the rest of time, when that slot could be filled by something most of us would much rather hear (side note: I totally get there are people who got into NIN with THTF and With Teeth, so I'm still happy for them they get to hear a song live that means so much to them. NIN has a lot of kinds of fans to cater to - I understand that).
The upside to all of this is that I don't actively dislike any of the songs above - a mediocre NIN song is still a NIN song - but the fact that I find them so lackluster disappoints me overall. There are individual moments of NIN I actively dislike ("your world, that is," "will you BITE the HAND that FEEEEDS you," "YOU! whatcha lookin' at?," "big black hole gonna eat me up someday," etc.), and there are things I really like about several of the generic songs (the synth breakdown in THTF, the overall feel of Came Back Haunted, the post-verse/pre-chorus and female vocals on Less Than, etc.), but it's the fact that most of the singles sound like they went, "okay, drum beat, guitar riff, generic lyrics, cool breakdown and a few more layers on top aaaand song written. That's lunch, guys."
Think about "This is a Trent Reznor song." It shouldn't be that easy to write a song that sounds like so many NIN songs at once.
I want to be excited and confused and challenged by Nine Inch Nails - the way I was by the early albums and the way I have been post-Fragile by All The Love In The World, My Violent Heart, Demon Seed, All Time Low, Everything, Burning Bright, Dear World, The Lovers, The Background World, and God Break Down The Door. Mind you, I'm not saying I think those are the "best" NIN songs of the past 13 years, but the fact that they tread new ground and feel unsafe automatically gives them points in my book, whereas the safer, more cookie cutter songs tend to automatically rank very low on my list.
But I also love taking my shirt off and dancing to Discipline, so it's not an exact science.
Last edited by Toadflax; 05-21-2018 at 03:48 PM.
@Toadflax
well the recent NIN "hit" that is not a single, She's Gone Away, is pretty damn interesting and very well known
With the exception of Less Than (which I do like for what it is), the new trilogy has been everything I want from new NIN. I feel like the EP approach has allowed them to keep everything more in focus and trim away some of the fat that ends up on some albums.
That said, I love She's Gone Away, but it is a very boring song structurally speaking. The same drum/bass loop for 6 minutes, AABB verses, and a simple, verse/chorus/verse layout. To your point, though, it's a great example of how NIN can use interesting sounds, lyrics, layers, and ideas (i.e. the post-chorus scream) to make a fairly simple song really cool and interesting. It's the same reason I like Came Back Haunted more than most of the other "singles" I mentioned above.
Last edited by Toadflax; 05-21-2018 at 03:27 PM.
For the record, I love "Your world, that is...".
I hear where @Toadflax is coming from. I actually quite like 'Everything' and I find that it's a special enigma in the middle of an otherwise different album.
I personally think there are pros and cons to TR (and AR) having the film scores as such expansive outlets. I personally think that the majority of my favorite musical moments from Trent post-2005 come from these scores, and that has both slightly hindered NIN but also given us some amazing ambient and electronic music.