


The time when you are most in need of support is the time when you are most likely to reject and repel those who are most willing and able to provide it. Whether chorus or verse, it is a stripped-bed description of the self-destructive impulses that attend the abandonment of hope. Is that a chorus? Or a repeated verse? To describe it as a chorus would be to raise expectations of a rousing interlude that is entirely at odds with the unremitting nihilism of Reznor’s Hurt, although there is more than a hint of defiance in his delivery of the second stanza. What have I become My sweetest friend Everyone I know goes away In the end And you could have it all My empire of dirt I will let you down I will make you hurt There is profound illness.Īt source - at Trent Reznor - Hurt is fragile and, for all its pestilence, it has a matter of fact purity. To me he sings naked, from a foetal position. His lyrics and his rendition of the song are cold and metallic. The needle that tears a hole is not a metaphor.

The personal significance to Trent Reznor is obvious. I hurt myself today To see if I still feel I focus on the pain The only thing that’s real The needle tears a hole The old familiar sting Try to kill it all away But I remember everything The river empties into an ocean of anguish and resignation. Rips, eddies and back-currents of accumulated meaning deposit their silt onto a bed of gravel. They pour their stories, their circumstances and contexts, their significant other meanings into the stream millions of micro-confluences each subtly altering the river’s course.Įvery tortured soul who interprets the lyrics to their own ends is a tributary that makes the current stronger.īy the time the song meets the sea at Johnny Cash Bay it is deep and dark. The song has become personal and precise to millions of listeners. The lyrics are personal and precise.Īt the same time they are wide open to interpretation. It was written by him, about him, and most likely for him.
