A GREATEST-HITS OBLIGATION GREW INTO HESITATION MARKS

Nine Inch Nails’ 2013 comeback album began with a chore left over from an old contract. 📄

Trent Reznor said NIN still owed Interscope a greatest-hits collection under an agreement signed roughly 20 years earlier. When discussions turned to adding a couple of new songs, he approached the job with an open mind — and some reluctance.

The first results were “Satellite” and “Everything.” They were more minimal and pop-facing than Reznor might previously have allowed himself to release. Instead of discarding that unfamiliar direction, he decided to keep testing it. 🧊

A couple of songs became a few more. Soon, Reznor, Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder were making a full Nine Inch Nails album. Reznor eventually worked through about 100 ideas, concentrating on rhythm, space and restraint rather than automatically filling every gap with guitars. 🎛️

Even the familiar NIN release valve was questioned. Loud guitars were tried on the new songs, but Reznor felt they sounded false. Moulder said the team deliberately avoided the classic move where the chorus rises and a wall of guitars arrives; some choruses went downward instead. 🔁

The sessions also became unusually open. Lindsey Buckingham was invited to play while parts of the material still had no melodies, with no detailed instructions about what his guitar should do. The Fleetwood Mac musician’s organic playing was allowed to meet Reznor’s electronics on its own terms. 🎸

Meanwhile, the project stayed unannounced for roughly a year. In May 2013, Reznor finally revealed that the supposedly dormant Nine Inch Nails had already completed an entire album. 🤫

Both original greatest-hits songs remained on Hesitation Marks. The backward-looking assignment had become NIN’s first full-length record in five years.

Sometimes two obligatory songs are enough to find the crack in the ice. 🖤

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