The touring cycle is over, and that means it's time to go crazy thinking about NIN live again! A friend of mine and I were talking about this and both decided to make our dream setlists. This doesn't mean songs you want to see live in no particular order, this doesn't mean something realistic that could get played in the future and seems somewhat likely with just a few odd things thrown in, this doesn't mean anything about production or lineup. This is all about the ideal NIN show you can dream of, with a maximum of around 30 songs to cap it off.
Assume that the venue, production and lineup all allow for whatever setlist you come up with. No songs are off the table, no arrangement is too complex and no pattern has to be followed. Think March of the Pigs should be in it, but at the end of the set? Go for it. Build from the ground up what you think would be the greatest possible NIN show you can imagine, what you think would have the best flow, order, and presentation.
This is what I came up with:
Pinion
Reptile (with the intro cut, so that the crashing guitars of Pinion lead into that buzzsaw-sounding wall of guitars)
Wish
Vessel
Sin
March of the Pigs
Head Down
Heresy
The Line Begins to Blur
Sanctified
Closer
Mr. Self Destruct
Just Like You Imagined
The Becoming
The Frail
The Wretched
Burn
Down In It
Eraser
Suck
Satellite
The Great Destroyer
The Greater Good (used almost as an encore break, done like on LITS where the stage was hidden)
Happiness In Slavery
Dead Souls
La Mer
The Great Below
--Encore Break--
In Two
Ruiner
Even Deeper
In This Twilight (w/ Zero-Sum Outro)
For me, the idea of Reptile opening a show is incredible, and I'm fairly sure it's never been done before. Having Pinion offer buildup with a curtain over the stage, then having that curtain fall as Reptile's guitars kick in and the green wall of lights flood through the descending curtain and out into the crowd is a mental image I'd love to see become a reality. Not all of my favorite songs are in this set, and some of them I could probably find a way to change out, but as a whole this is, to my eyes, a setlist that would provide almost everything I love about NIN, transition fairly smoothly from song to song with little work necessary, and allow for a lengthy, pleasing show with a lot of variety.