Journal 8/1/2025 - Yapping about Hurt by Nine Inch Nails

I FINALLY got around to listening to The Downward Spiral (I said I would on Tumblr months ago). Over the years I've gotten a lot of hearsay about Nine Inch Nail's horrible vile music but I think a lot of it is overreaction. I listened to the entire album and then right afterwards went online and saw a post where a snake got in somebody's birdhouse and ate all the baby birds, and I was far more upset about that than anything I heard in that album, lol!

I've been trying to form my thoughts about it since I finished it. I haven't had such an emotional reaction to an album in a long time. This record brought out some deep visceral feelings, which to be honest I wasn't expecting at all.

I'm not really a "critic", I don't necessarily like to "judge" music, just enjoy it--plus, I know it's been analyzed to death already, so I don't really want to write an essay on it as I feel like a lot of my conclusions are the same as many others that I've read in the past few hours. But I just feel the need to talk about Hurt and what I think about it now that I've heard the whole album.

Like a lot of people I grew up with the Johnny Cash version which is undoubtedly an amazing cover and the perfect conclusion to his life and career. But after hearing it at the end of the Downward Spiral it still had a huge impact, but in a different way. After an entire album of visceral, self-deprecating lyrics, it feels like a quiet acceptance of the things they've done to sabotage their own life.

I feel like you almost NEED to listen to the whole album to feel the weight of it.

I also feel like, as a concept album, it's probably best listened to from beginning to end all at once for the full effect.

What an incredible piece of art. I'll listen to it again sometime, though I would probably need to be the right mood, haha.