Trent Reznor
Trent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor, known professionally as Trent Reznor, is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, and film score composer. As a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, he is best known as the founder and principal songwriter of industrial rock project Nine Inch Nails. His first release under this pseudonym, the 1989 album Pretty Hate Machine, was a commercial and critical success. He has since released eight studio albums. He left Interscope Records in 2007 and was an independent recording artist until signing with...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth17 May 1965
CityMercer, PA
CountryUnited States of America
I think my music's more disturbing than Tupac's - or at least I thought some of the themes of 'The Downward Spiral' were more disturbing on a deeper level - you know, issues about suicide and hating yourself and God and people and everything else.
I'm a lot less precious than I used to be about putting things out, for better or for worse. The result of a public that has a very high consumption rate and turnover rate is people listen to more music but spend less time with individual bits of music.
'Downward Spiral' felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I'd explode. I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts.
It's a humbling thing, having kids. One of my sons came to rehearsals, and now he says Daddy's job is 'go play loud music.'
Sometimes we pee on each other before we go on stage.
Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and 'clean' versions be made for them to carry.
When I'm writing music, I'm not playing a character. I'm not Alice Cooper or Gene Simmons or someone like that, who has acknowledged that they are writing music for a character.
Spotify - I met those guys before they launched in America and was wildly excited about the idea. 'Wow, this is all the music in the world, for a flat fee.'
People want to listen to a lot of music and do whatever they want with it. They don't want DRM, they don't want subscriptions. They don't want a player that only can do this but can't do that and you only have one copy. They don't want that. You know? I don't want that.
Now that I have a thousand albums in my car all the time, I listen to more music. I was too lazy; I always had the same five discs in there. I'd never think to change it.
Being in a band with my wife, I'm very aware of the multitude of ways that can go wrong. We're best friends and are interested in the same things, so it's natural to make music together.
After coming from a major label, I realized the entire business has been decimated, and you can't look to labels to try to figure it out because they don't even use the technology, and they're oblivious to how people consume music these days.
It's easy to get lost in the shuffle, and just enticing people to hear the music for free doesn't mean that much when everyone else is essentially doing the same thing on MySpace, or wherever.
In 2010, aside from that niche of music that I have no interest in - Black Eyed Peas territory, disposable pop stuff - there's almost an incentive to go back to making music as adventurous and groundbreaking as you can, because nobody gets a big hit anymore.