Happy Birthday to The Fragile

[RJK]

Just got this done
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2rdYgoB...=1gcgocysgscad

[trollmanen]

Hoping we get some merch announced today at least. If Woodstock got something, I would think The Fragile would. Not holding my breath for a 20th anniversary deluxe edition, but hopefully we'll still get that 5.1 mix some day. Here's my favorite possession, signed at the meet and greet in 2009:

[cdm]

[WorzelG]

So Pitchfork linked to their more recent review of it, and everyone is reminding them of the original 2/10 one! Forgive and forget I say, I just love that an album can be reassessed in later times and for people to admit how wrong they were

I remember buying this at Tower Records with my sister and some friends and listening the next day while doing some really mundane task in the house like tidying up, but just being drawn in by the music. The Frail in particular took me to another place. I had to phone my sister to rave on about it. The whole thing took years to properly digest though

[chuckrh]

So Pitchfork linked to their more recent review of it, and everyone is reminding them of the original 2/10 one! Forgive and forget I say, I just love that an album can be reassessed in later times and for people to admit how wrong they were

I remember buying this at Tower Records with my sister and some friends and listening the next day while doing some really mundane task in the house like tidying up, but just being drawn in by the music. The Frail in particular took me to another place. I had to phone my sister to rave on about it. The whole thing took years to properly digest though

it's my go to NIN. an epic end of the decade record in the same way the Cure "Disintegration" was. probably my 2 favorite records of all time or pretty damn close.

[WorzelG]

it's my go to NIN. an epic end of the decade record in the same way the Cure "Disintegration" was. probably my 2 favorite records of all time or pretty damn close.

Yeah it made me realise I had a really crappy stereo due to having no money and got a much better job after being made redundant the following year, and buying a 6CD changing system and headphones so I could listen properly!

[fillow]

This is my bootleg copy of an album, borrowed from a friend of a friend around 2001 or 2002 and never returned... This was back when I had no concept of real/bootleg CDs and have never seen a digipak record in my life (jewel case was the only thing I knew). This is what got me into NIN and a couple of years later cemented them as my favorite band to this day. Happy birthday, Halo 14.

https://imgur.com/a/UQbrb40

[slopesandsam]

Obligatory nostalgia-fueled reminiscing:

The lead-up to the release of TF is probably the most hyped I've ever been for something new. It was kinda just this perfect storm of factors all contributing to me being insanely excited about new NIN. I'd actually only gotten into NIN the year before - I'd liked what I'd heard on the radio, but an early attempt to listen to PHM several years earlier (based on the knowledge that Trent had produced Manson's ACS) had failed. But then this kid at my school really wanted to borrow my copy of ACS, and offered me TDS in return. I reluctantly agreed, only to discover that TDS was my new favourite album pretty much instantly. That music felt like it had been specially designed to interface with my brain in particular. And so I was obviously very excited at the prospect of even more of that sort of music.

It was also the early days of the internet, and just the concept of being able to hear snippets of new music, and see album artwork, before it appeared in a record store, was exciting. It seems pretty bizarre now, when everything has a long marketing campaign that primarily takes place on the internet, but back in those days we were still used to only finding out that stuff existed when it appeared in stores. Maybe the really popular stuff would get a "coming soon" poster in the store a few weeks ahead of time. So when the nin website first appeared, a black screen that played a short bit of The Way Out Is Through, I was basically vibrating in my seat with excitement. The cool sound-board grid with samples from TDTWWA single? The cryptic pictures from inside the studio?

I downloaded radio rips of TDTWWA, Starfuckers, and WITT (side-question: does anyone still have these? I mean, the radio-rips that were circulating back then. They had static and bits of the DJs talking, and I deleted my mp3s when I got the album, but now I'd like them again for nostalgia purposes). I remember thinking it sucked when the release date got changed from 9/9/99 to 21/9/99 because of some sort of delay in the manufacturing process - largely because my birthday was on 16th, and I was a kid with basically zero dollars to my name, so I'd hoped to ask for it for my birthday (I got Filter's Title of Record instead). Fortunately, I also got some cash from relatives that I was able to purchase TF with.

The album came out a day early in Australia (which, given the time difference, is more like two days early, which made me feel super privileged at the time). It was a Monday, but it was school holidays. I got up and rode my bike to the record store so I could be there as soon as it opened. I was the only one, and when I didn't see the album on the shelves, I had a horrible sinking feeling (the TDTWWA single was massively delayed in Australia - it was several weeks after its official release date before it showed up in stores - I have no idea what caused that delay). So I asked the clerk, and he went out back, returned with a cardboard box that he opened, and withdrew the copy of TF that's still sitting on my shelf today.

I rode home, told my family not to disturb me, went up to my room, pulled the blinds, closed the door, turned the light off, stuck the Left CD into the discman, popped the headphones in, and listened to the whole thing in the dark - interrupted only by the necessity of switching the CDs. (I'd actually only early that year discovered that NIN's music sounded so much better on headphones - it was my last year in high school, which meant a lot of project work, which meant late nights, which meant I couldn't blast music on my stereo, so I'd appropriated my brother's discman for the year.)

The thing about TF is that even though I was so insanely hyped you'd assume I was guaranteed to be disappointed, I wasn't. In fact, my expectations were exceeded. The album didn't sound like I'd imagined it would, based on the snippets of music on nin.com and the singles I'd downloaded. It sounded like something entirely unexpected and incredible. It remains, to this day, my favourite album.

[chuckrh]

& we haven't even talked about the tour. Out of hundreds of shows that I've seen, still 1 of the best ever for me. Footage from the show I saw at the Gorge in Washington state is all over the dvd. Still stunning every time I listen to it.

[Erneuert]

Happy birthday beautiful record and to Stephen King!

[piggy]

I, too, remember the insanely tantalizing buildup to the release. Reading articles in magazines and trolling the web from '97 to '99 for any dribs and drabs about how the recording process was going. Hearing TDTWWA on the radio in July (and taping it so I could keep listening!) and then buying the CD single as soon as it dropped. Seeing "The Fragile" performed on the MTV VMAs in September, including the interview with Kurt Loder and the little snippets of other songs from the album.

I bought it at a midnight release party at a Graywhale store in Utah. I drove 30 miles to get it and hung out with record store peeps for a while, including employees and fellow music nerds Brian and Rachael (who passed away 15 years ago and I thought of her as I typed this.) I remember driving home in my old Plymouth with the album cranking out of my Blaupunkt CD player and just fucking loving life. I still have my original CD from release day. The discs are mighty toasty now, but they still play.

[neorev]

[versusreality]

I remember 9/9/99. I had just started freshmen year of high school, the Dreamcast came out, and I couldn't wait to watch the VMAs that night. I was a "closet" NIN fan at the time. I would secretly listen to my parent's NIN cds. I didn't think it was "cool" to listen to your parents music, which is why I never did it in front of them. 12 year old mentality. but 9/9/99 is when I "came out the NIN closet" . First I remember watching the interview in the pre-show, thinking "man, everything just looks and sounds cool in this". Later, the performance came. I remember my parents saying "we haven't watched a NIN performance on TV since Woodstock" and "how different" it sounded and they looked. I was transfixed while watching that performance.

My parents got the Fragile on release day. I remember having one of those 6 cd players. they put in PHM, Broken, TDS, and discs 1 and 2 of the Fragile and we listened to everything all the way through, a NIN marathon! my parents didn't like the Fragile that much on first listen. I did, because it was the "cool new" record. I quickly had favorites, the more pop sounding tracks of the album (WITT, ITV, NYD) . but I enjoyed it over all.

I can't believe that was 20 years ago..

[slopesandsam]

I still have my original CD from release day. The discs are mighty toasty now, but they still play.

My original TF CDs also still play...until Ripe (With Decay), where they're scratchy as shit.

For a long time I just put up with this, because I loved those CDs for sentimental reasons. But there was also this rumour that the Australian pressings of TF were somehow of lower quality - the sound was supposed to be all washed out, or something. So eventually I had a friend buy a copy of the album from the States and bring it over. I can't hear a difference.

[slopesandsam]

Here's something that I think makes me an enormous idiot. Only today, as I was reflecting on writing my post above, did I realise that "The Way Out Is Through" is actually a complete sentence. For twenty goddamn years I've just assumed it was a sentence fragment, artfully cut short. You know, as in "The way out is through [this door]" or "The way out is through [this tunnel that leads...into the void]", etc. Only today did it occur to me that it meant "The only way to get out of this shit is by going through it". I chalk it up to making an assumption when I was eighteen and then never reexamining it until today.

I have always said that every time I listen to TF I notice something new.

[StockAvuryah]

20 years.. and the album still grows and grows, like a living being. The sheer amount of work, thought, emotion, and life that was put into it is staggering. On the brink of falling apart but always finding the way out through.

[Space Suicide]

Happy 20th.

I haven't listened to this album in years.

[katara]

Happy 20th.

I haven't listened to this album in years.

I'm the same. Still waiting for a proper reissue.

[BRoswell]

Unlike a lot of people, I didn't really discover The Fragile until 2007-2008. I had only recently discovered how much I liked Nine Inch Nails after years of writing them off as "angry white boy music". I was really into With Teeth and Year Zero at the time, but it wasn't until my group of friends was going through a major crisis that I really sat down and listened to it in full. It's such a dense, beautiful album that has helped me and many others through hard times, and it still remains tied with The Downward Spiral as my favorite album.

[Halo Infinity]

The Fragile is the Nine Inch Nails album I still relate to the most both mentally and emotionally, which is easily the same album I've also cried to the most out of all of them whenever I was severely depressed.

I first listened to The Fragile in autumn of 2002 when I just started becoming a fan. It was much to my surprise even until today, the first Nine Inch Nails album to hold my attention and interest more than Pretty Hate Machine, Broken and The Downward Spiral did, to the point where I listened to nothing but The Fragile.

I also liked both the Left and the Right CDs equally, and never really favored one CD over the other. There were always songs that I wouldn't want to trade from other songs, and have always appreciated and enjoyed The Fragile as the double LP that it was ultimately intended to be.

I even like to sometimes ponder that it was around the era of the Nintendo 64/PSX and the Nintendo GameCube/PS2 and how it was also still all about AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo at the time before Gmail, and Xanga as far as social media went, and how it was a great way to also start off 2000 and the 2000s as a fan with And All That Could Have Been Live./Still. arriving in very early 2002. (I know it's a bit of drift, but I like to always visualize eras of whenever albums came out to that extent.)

And well, whoa. 2 complete decades have finally passed since then. As with all other NIN releases, it's definitely aged excellently as always.

[tony.parente]

Wow. Nine inch nails arguably most important records 20 year anniversary goes by and not a peep from Trent yet ACSS gets a blurb on its 20 year? Super weird.

[WorzelG]

Wow. Nine inch nails arguably most important records 20 year anniversary goes by and not a peep from Trent yet ACC gets a blurb on its 20 year? Super weird.

Is that ACS Anti Christ Superstar you’re talking about? Maybe they’re just busy

[BRoswell]

Maybe they'll be a mention on Monday. I don't know who runs the NIN social media accounts, but considering the anniversary fell over the weekend, maybe they just decided to wait. Either way, if anything gets posted, it'll probably be like the Downward Spiral post from a few months ago.

[spahn]

So, September 21st, 1999, I was 21 years old and six years deprived from a full length NIN album. During my lunch break that day, I dashed out to the local mall and walked into Specs Music and was in awe of how was blown away by Somewhat Damaged as soon as I popped in the Left side into my 10 disc CD Changer in the trunk of my car. The rest of the album was bit weird to me as I was expecting/hoping for another downward spiral. It took a few listens to fully appreciate this masterpiece of an album.

20 Years later, it's a timeless piece of artwork. The music, the lyrics, the soundscapes and the presentation are all to be marveled by musicians and listeners today.

[Prettybrokenspiral]

I honestly think Trent is pissed as fuck with us for not helping Mike Garson buy a new house or whatever that whole thing was about earlier in the year. That being said, there were droves of people acting like right cunts on his Twitter feed about it and I'd like to think that no one from ETS was acting like that..

That's why there's been no Bird Box Deluxe package, as originally professed, or posts from the oracle himself in regards to his most revered work. Maybe he just dislikes it entirely because of where he was in life when he made it, who knows..

But for "lots coming in 2019", it sure has been deathlike-silence ever since the first of the year..

[BRoswell]

^With posts like that, I'm not surprised at Trent & Atticus' ambivalence toward the fanbase.

[cdm]

...it sure has been deathlike-silence ever since the first of the year.

Yeah, no kidding, it's almost as if he has a ton of shit going on with even more on the horizon.

[sweeterthan]

These last few posts seem more like random nin comments and not fragile birthday specific. Let’s get back on topic.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[cdm]

I bought The Fragile at Borders in Wheaton IL as soon as my Tuesday classes let out. For $27.99 if i recall correctly. I was blown away by the packaging. Left disc? Right disc? The way the booklet slid into it's open-ended pocket...everything about it was / is genius.

The music even more so. I don't have a spiritual connection to it (or any piece of music for that matter) in the sense that it "saved me". I'd say my connection is more personal in that I spent a lot of time just getting lost in the sounds and textures through a pair of headphones. The Fragile is my absolute favorite album by any artist and it's not really close. My home stereo at the time was a 5 disc changer and both discs lived in there until I got rid of the player about 10 years later.

[eversonpoe]

from an instagram post i made on saturday:

happy 20th birthday to my favorite album of all time. here is my original CD copy (well-worn) that completely changed my life the first time i heard it. and now playing is my original vinyl pressing that i bought in 1999 at reckless records in evanston for only $17.99, and has only been played twice before. words cannot describe how much this album means to me.