Head Like A POLL: ILM Artist Poll #119 - Nine Inch Nails

https://i.imgur.com/Yf5cHlX.jpeg

1. Songs: Rank up to your top 30 songs by Nine Inch Nails. How To Destroy Angels tracks and tracks from Reznor's soundtrack work are eligible too.

2. Releases: Rank up to your top 10 releases by Nine Inch Nails. Albums, EPs, live albums, and remix albums are all eligible, as well as How To Destroy Angels releases and Reznor's soundtrack releases.

3. Remixes: Rank up to your top 10 remixes, either of Nine Inch Nails tracks or remixes of others by Nine Inch Nails/Trent Reznor.

Send ballots to ilmninpoll AT gmail dot com. Order ballots from highest (#1) to lowest, without numbers, and include your username.

Voting closes approx 12:01am GMT on 19 April 2024 (~3 weeks time)

YAAAAAAY LETS FUCKIN GO

(also this will be difficult)

Got a news alert about some young kids covering "Wish" for charity, which seems ... crazy.

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U0flA_Yp64

one obscurity i wanna highlight immediately is "and all that could have been" from still

i think you have that backwards: still is the second disc on All That Could Have Been :)

and rules, obv

xp to josh - least embarassing line in the nine inch nails song "wish"

stoked for the poll!

Hell yeah you just made my spring

How do people generally feel about lurkers submitting ballots for artist polls? Is it frowned upon? Apologies for the ridiculous question...

it's completely fine! the more ballots the better

i did a discog run only a few years ago so i should be able to do this from memory … might just run it again tho

still was my fave nin thing for ages, between “and all that could’ve been” and all of the instrumentals

from my relisten so far tds kinda towers over everything else but fragile left on its own is close

still is so good though yeah, that's a contender for #1 album

I will repeat my frequent assertion that 21st century NIN albums > 20th century NIN albums, and count on being the person who votes The Slip highest.

But I'm curious where the three most recent EPs will end up.

It's strange to realize as a one-time superfan that I now have not heard the majority of NIN albums.

What if I said the Broken EP is the best thing he ever did?

You'd be mostly right, especially if you throw in the bonus tracks.

3 weeks, OK. This is a good motivator to listen to everything post-"With Teeth", most of which I've never heard and/or only heard once.

OH GOD you're including the soundtracks. Fuckkkkk

It's so daunting. I'm going to listen to Cortini's "Sonno" and contemplate my participation, that's a lot of music to sort through

The releases post 'Hesitation Marks' I'm very hazy on, a good opportunity to explore.

I will however be ignoring the soundtracks, as I do have other stuff to do over the next three weeks.

Thanks for organising ufo!

I love that record (Sonno). Looks like it's currently off streaming, but still on Bandcamp thankfully.

Does Further Down the Spiral count as remixes? Even the self-remixes?

as i’ve posted in every nin thread for the past few years:

hesitation marks >>>>>>

I've not listened for years, but remember finding it mostly a bit of a drag? 'Copy of A' and 'Satellite' are bangers though.

I'll start there, thanks ivy.

Im nervous my ballot might include the entire downward spiral but we'll see

it took me a few years to realize how good it was

xp

I'm just listening to hesitation marks for the first time, 'everything' stood out as being almost like... the beatles?!?!? ('almost' doing a lot of work there of course.)

I owned every halo up to 11, then just stopped bothering, didn't even buy the fragile, though I'm reasonably familiar with it. maybe played the next two albums once or twice. I'll do my best to catch up over the next three weeks.

I have a sense With Teeth might be A-tier and just caught me in an awkward post-fandom stage when I was too busy listening to Can or whatever.

I'm going to have a lot of With Teeth tracks. I remember being really impressed by Hesitation Marks too but don't think I've heard anything since, except for an odd track or too that didn't leave much of an impression.

ivy’s five-point campaign for hesitation marks as the best nin album:

1. it’s the funkiest. maybe a side/meta argument i could make is that trent’s funkiness is what ultimately separates him from his peers in industrial/ -rock and -metal and is one of the reasons his music ended up being so successful. e.g. the sheer amount of space between the bass drum and the snare in “closer” and how it’s such a wide and unstable space it makes you want to snap your body in half from the intensity of the gravity

2. it’s the most minimal i.e. it does the most with the least. not that i’m looking for minimalism from nin (i am all about the brutality and anger being dramatically contrasted with the melancholic stillness and beauty) but what can i say it really fucking works when combined with the aforementioned funkiness, like watching a construction site come to life and breakdance

3. idk sometimes i can’t listen to the downward spiral or the fragile because they are consummate bummers, that’s why they’re so good obv, like the guy swam deep in the voidlike blackness of his own bullshit and resurfaced to tell us about it, and we recognized something in it in ourselves, and that very dynamic is the reason why i became a nine inch nails fan. but there’s something so much more I HATE TO SAY IT BUT mature about the way this album depicts the same feelings still following you even if they never quite take over entirely like they used to

4. prob the most instances of “this song ended in a very different place from where it started” on a nin album

5. i saw them twice in this period, first with gybe! and second with soundgarden, two of the best shows ive ever seen (obv, its nin). i took my mom with me both times. she got really into nin just from osmosis, a side-effect of raising a kid like me. they played “the hand that feeds” all the time on one of the music video channels i watched. it’s still her favorite song

But I'm curious where the three most recent EPs will end up.
Voting for at least 3 tracks from these. I like the post reunion stuff significantly higher than everything after TDS but pre breakup/pause. Tried With Teeth again a little while ago preparing to be pleasantly surprised and couldn’t even get through the whole thing.

“How the west was really won” from the Watchmen show is also top tier

the last three tracks on with teeth are really where it’s at

it took me a few years to realize how good it was

The thing about Hesitation Marks (as I've said before) is that all the advance singles kinda sucked as singles, but worked brilliantly in the context of the whole album.

Are Reznor remixes in the running? His remix of Curve's "Missing Link" is pretty cool.

i'm not really expecting anyone to vote for the soundtracks that's more just there if anyone really wants to include them because they already have strong opinions

reznor remixes of others/self are eligible for the remixes poll

the best track on with teeth is "all the love in the world"

bad witch is excellent and probably a top 4 release for me

Oh right, listening to Bad Witch now and it's ringing a bell, sounds fantastic.

the whole Year Zero remixed album pretty much rules imo

i was starting to figure out my ballot last night and my top 10 might be just Broken minus “Pinion” lol

Broken still goes, i love it so muchhhhhhh

i don't really care for broken beyond "wish" honestly

(recoils)

i enjoyed this comment on those kids doing a cover of Wish: “Fistbump… Thank god that little girl said Fistbump”

the dfa influence is so strong on with teeth it's pretty funny. "only" especially

Totally, so blatant but it works.

The Fragile: Deviations 1 > The Fragile imho, though there's a few songs that def benefit more from the vocals.

I feel I can play Deviations end to end with no need for skipping.

Years ago I made a custom mixtape of the Fragile I called "Center" (complete with outtro/intro editing to make it work as a fluid whole). Here's the track list:

The Way Out Is Through
The Day the World Went Away
Somewhat Damaged
Into the Void
Just Like You Imagined
The Fragile
The Frail
The Big COme Down
Complication
The Mark Has Been Made
10 Miles High
Pilgrimage
Underneath It All
La Mer
The Great Below

This would possibly be my #1. Also it was truly tough picking The Way Out Is Through over Somewhat Damaged as an opener. They're both perfect for that.

let a sober guy enjoy his creative life for ffs

Come on now - it's okay not to like a dude's music. He's enjoying his creative life just fine regardless of my opinion of his recent lyrical output omg, no need to be so defensive

cool it with the patronizing tone

but my issue is that you are framing this around a binary of addiction vs sobriety in terms of good and bad and that is a deeply fucked narrative

you are allowed to enjoy or not enjoy whatever albums you like but once you start critiqueing feelings as “genuine” vs non-“genuine” w/r/t sobriety i am absolutely going to call it out because that kind of thinking is misguided & is actually damaging?

and if you can’t see that idk what else to say

you are framing this around a binary of addiction vs sobriety in terms of good and bad and that is a deeply fucked narrative

But...but...how else do you explain Aerosmith?

(N.B. I disagree with octobeard's analysis because I've always thought 21st century NIN > 20th century NIN)

This is the beauty of a poll. Stoked to see what the results will be

but my issue is that you are framing this around a binary of addiction vs sobriety in terms of good and bad and that is a deeply fucked narrative

I hope you're not implying that I'm suggesting that addicts with pain and trauma make better music than sober people, that's absolutely not what I'm trying to say. Addiction and his lifestyle fueled a lot of demons that he channeled in his music (and the way he expressed this was how he connected with his 80's/90's audience), this is stuff he's discussed in countless interviews - I don't think anything I'm saying is that controversial, just a difference of opinion!

I think the reason Bad Witch grabbed me so much is that it was raw.

idk i mean this didn't come out of nowhere, not the actual events is also really raw and add violence is like an attempt to compose yourself in between two breakdowns... part of why i love that trilogy of releases

there isn't really one generalization i can make about his releases post-sobriety. i think they all take a concept as far as they can, except for maybe the slip (concept for which must've been "we need new bangers in the set")

and that's basically true of all of his work beforehand

i also don't think "find my way" has anything melodically in common with "underneath it all" and every artist recycles themselves, it's called style

i also feel like there's the implication here that ppl successfully shrug off their demons after getting sober and no longer feel the tension they once did when they were fucked up. folks, that ain't the case

if you *think* it's missing, that's fair, but... let me be clear, that continues to be a projection

exactly

i've found there to be a pretty clear hierarchy with nin: 80s/90s > 10s > 00s. there's still some worthwhile stuff from the 00s but with teeth through to the slip is the weakest run. he/they have been pretty creatively reinvigorated the last decade or so though

I think it’s fair to say that his work after The Fragile generally is most interesting to the extent that it pushes in different directions rather than seeking to preserve the feeling of his earlier work - even when those directions are basically diametrically opposed e.g. Hesitation Marks vs Not The Actual Events / Bad Witch (the former of which reminds me of the abstract aggression of post-comeback Wire; the latter just builds on that with added cabaret vibes rather than more rawness, I think).

But none of that has anything to do with drugs / addiction in my view.

basically every direction he's pushed in has been good except the slip & ghosts i-iv, just the execution has varied in quality

No love for Year Zero anyone??

i've found there to be a pretty clear hierarchy with nin: 80s/90s > 10s > 00s.

hard disagree with the 80s/90s. re-listening to PHM was shocking to me. it's so completely singular in their discography. reznor kinda laid down one of those kids books where you could choose your own adventure and the future Downward Spiral area of exploration won out.

Which part of the quote are you disagreeing with?

sorry - the grouping of the 80s and the 90s output. PHM just stands as an outlier.

I agree with that in some ways but also PHM / Broken / TDS are all so different from each other that grouping any of them together as a single era seems a bit odd. Much more continuity between TDS and The Fragile IMO

oh yeah i'm just talking about these periods in terms of quality, not saying each period is distinct stylistically. broken was obviously quite a major change from pretty hate machine, before the downward spiral reconciled the two. there's more continuity between tds/the fragile but the fragile draws a lot less on synthpop and is just generally less pop.

Hesitation Marks is sounding/feeling better than remembered.

I forgot all about “Everything”, it seems!

Add Violence is SOLID.

I don’t know if I gave the 2016/2017/2018 releases enough attention at the time.

I hadn't heard Year Zero or some of the other more recent releases and there was some good stuff, but it didn't really impact my ballot. I also realized that Funky Trent is my favorite Trent, and there's a lot of either slow plodding or rock & roll uptempo grooves. Also With Teeth really did bring the hooks.

How rad would it have been if the Broken tape had put Physical and Suck on an answering machine microcassette instead of just sticking them on side b?

can i just say that "suck" is an amazing song and cutting it from my ballot was heartbreaking

I haven’t gotten to the cutting stage yet :-(

with nin cutting is inevitable (terrible joek sorry sorry i’ll go now)

my ballot has a lot of hesitation marks

same lol

I forgot all about “Everything”, it seems!

This is my least favorite song by far on that album. Just doesn't even sound like NIN to me.

can i just say that "suck" is an amazing song and cutting it from my ballot was heartbreaking

It really is! My 2nd fav on Broken behind Happiness in Slavery. It is insanely funky

Just doesn't even sound like NIN to me.

which is why i put it high up on my ballot! it def *sounds* like NIN, but feels not so much like a NIN song for me. it was like the first time i heard Into The Void. it just didn't sound like the typical type of song he would write, and it was great!

What's the new deadline for this?

roughly 12:01 am monday gmt

Just want to say that I have really enjoyed trying to get my thoughts in order for this poll. NIN are in this sweet spot for me where I am deeply familiar with enough of the music that it feels worthwhile to try to engage with the process properly, but unfamiliar with enough of it that the engagement has also been a total voyage of discovery.

ballot sent and almost before realizing my selection pool had nothing from phm or the fragile.

there is still time for ballots for a bit longer still

So you can vote for this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mGaoMBlUbU

or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLPcE-5YWKI

i think i'm still waiting on a ballot from western with bacon flavor, is there anyone else?

I just want to say thanks ufo for keeping this ILM madness going.

NIN isn't one of my bands but looking forward to the playlist.

xp you got mine - i was the jerk with "the frail/wretched" as one song

ah ok!

we have 20 ballots now which is alright. i don't think there's any outstanding?

ok poll's closed. rollout will be sometime soon but idk exactly when yet

how many ballots did u end up with??

oh lol nvm i can totally read i swear

I meant to vote in this, but just couldn't get it together in time. Looking forward to the rollout!

I was right *there* for NIN: into plenty of adjacent bands, danced to Head Like A Hole at various appalling indie clubs, and was friends with people who had the Reznor aesthetic in their bones (and on their feet) but the band somehow totally passed me by. Am here for the rollout.

the results rollout is underway!

And POLL That Could Have Been: ILM Artist Poll #119 - Nine Inch Nails - RESULTS