Nine Inch Nails - Me, I'm Not

It's hard to see what I'm capable of.

Album: Year Zero [fifth album]
Genre: Industrial, Digital Hardcore, IDM, Dance
Album Release: April 17th 2007
Length: 4:52
Producer: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Vocalist: Trent Reznor [age 41]
Label: Interscope Records

Official Audio


Live in Stockholm from 2007


Live in 2013

Charts, Streams & Sales

Australia (albums): #5
Canada (albums): #3
Germany (albums): #6
UK (albums): #6 [certified silver]
USA (albums): #2
Spotify: 5,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 1,400,000 +
Rolling Stone: Top 50 Albums of 2007: #21

Credits & Gear

Bass, drum machine, synthesizers

Details

• Nine Inch Nails encouraged people to remix the song by releasing the .WAV files on their website. 
• 'Year Zero' is a concept album set in a sci-fi, dystopian world of 2022. 2022 was selected by Reznor as the year society would become a dystopia and start again. The album is atmospheric and creates a sense of dread, while also sounding futuristic by using pulses, beeps, sine waves, echoes and a distorted low end.
  
  It uses music in a way that's unpredictable, for example the drums will get louder for two beats before returning to normal in a way that's jarring. The singer intonates at a normal volume before falling into a whisper and then goes high for one word only to whisper again. It makes the music sound alien and unfamiliar, as if the singer himself is confused. 
  
  Music makes sense because it's predictable. It establishes patterns, only to break them and re-establish them once more. 'Me, I'm Not', has a sonic pallette, or lexicon, of its own, the sounds employed are certainly unconventional, but it retains the syntax necessary to make it understandable. The patterns are still there, just not necessarily where you would expect them to be.
  
  
• 'Year Zero' would be Reznor's last LP on Interscope Records. He said the label were ripping-off honest fans by charging absurd amounts of money for the album, even going as far as to encourage its "theft" from illegal websites such as Napster. He told a crowd in Australia "steal and steal and steal some more and give it to all your friends and keep on stealing." I doubt Interscope were happy about that.
  
  
• Many people have used the words musical genius to describe Trent Reznor. I'm not sure I'd go as far though he's definitely a serious talent. I think the correct way to think about him is as a composer. As well as winning Grammy Awards with Nine Inch Nails, Reznor would go on to have success as a film composer, winning two Oscar's for Best Original Score, in 2010 and 2020 respectively. His ability to achieve the top prizes in multiple arenas of sound, as well as doing so in his own distinct style, show a natural ability missing in most musicians.
  
  In 2000, people knew Reznor was a good musician but they didn't know how good. He had a reputation as the trenchcoat guy when the Columbine high school shooters, also known as the trenchcoat mafia, had ruined the apparel for a generation. People dismissed Reznor as an icon for the brooding schoolboy when in reality he was fighting serious drug addiction and mental illness. His idiosyncracies were labelled as self-indulgence.
  
  With 'Things Falling Apart' he remixed one of his albums, 'The Fragile', that had only came out a year before. Fans balked at paying the asking price for what they essentially thought was the same thing and it was slated by critics. Pitchfork gave it a 0.4/10, NME gave it a mocking 10 out of 10, as if the idea of it getting top marks was laughable.
  
  The way I see 'Things Falling Apart' is as an exhibit of Reznor's creative pedigree. One album wasn't enough for him to express the breadth of his ideas. Perhaps in an attempt to answer his critics, who accused him of cashing in, on future records Reznor would release his remix albums alongside the main entry at no additional cost.
  
  What wasn't clear in 2000 however was that 'Things Falling Apart' and 'The Fragile', represented a giant leap forward, not only for Nine Inch Nails, but industrial music as a whole, away from the mechanical of old, and into the digital arena that would define the future of the sound. Talent hits a target other people can't hit, genius hits a target other people can't see.
  
  The change in the bands sonic pallette reflected a broader change in society, or more specifically, the work environment. When computers became dominant in the workplace industrial music also became high-tech, replacing the bolts and gears of the mechanical with the pulses and whirs of the digital. Industrial music used to focus on the banging of metal sheets and the clanging of hammers, the sound of industry, but the industry of the new millennium would be done in cyberspace and the distinctive noise of the computer would become the norm.
  
  Industrial, as it was known, was dead, people just didn't realise it yet. Trent Reznor saw the change before the critics did and they were left looking the wrong way for a train that had already came and went.
  
  I use Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails interchangeably as the the group is Reznor's project. Until Atticus Ross joined in 2016, they didn't have any other official members. Before that date Reznor wrote and produced most of the work himself, though he did have help performing. The digitisation of Nine Inch Nails music provided the band leader greater creative control than he had before because computers didn't need to be paid. Reznor was able to experiment to his hearts content, which led to a renaissance in his output.
  
  
• During 1992, in what was possibly a morbid publicity stunt, Reznor moved his group into the Manson Murder House (the Hollywood home where the Manson Family killed the heavily pregnant actress Sharon Tate). The rent was $11,000 per month. You'd have to pay me money to sleep in that house.
  
  
• The American military have used Nine Inch Nails songs to torture prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center and other such facilities. After repeated exposure, sometimes lasting days, prisoners were reported to have started beating their heads against the wall for relief.
  
  
• Reznor has described his lyrics as the words he writes in his journal to keep himself from going crazy. His very early work was influenced by The Clash and Reznor doesn't believe it to be a true reflection of him as a musician, having said he was trying to be "cool". 

Artwork