Nine Inch Nails - Where Is Everybody? (Remix)

But for all I aspire I am really a liar.

Album: Things Falling Apart [second remix album]
Genre: Industrial, Glitch, Digital Hardcore
Album Release: November 21st 2000
Length: 5:08
Producer: Trent Reznor & Various
Vocalist: Trent Reznor [age 35]
Label: Interscope Records

Official Audio


Original Version

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Spotify: 543,000 +
YouTube Music: 250,000 +

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• 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.
  
  
• 'Where is Everybody? Remix' is an early example of both glitch music and digital hardcore. It's much dancier than previous Nine Inch Nails work. Many fans of the groups earlier releases didn't like the new sound as it was a departure from their traditional industrial. 
  
  
• 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".
  
  

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