3 Deep Cuts by Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails just announced dates for the upcoming Peel It Back Tour. It begins in Dublin in June and continues with a North American run from August through September. The band last toured in 2022.

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Meanwhile, bandmates Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have kept busy scoring films. They recently won Best Original Score at the Golden Globes for Luca Guadagnino’s sports drama Challengers.

While you wait for the tour and fans speculate over which songs the band will play, here are three deep cuts from Nine Inch Nails.

“Something I Can Never Have” from Pretty Hate Machine (1989)

There’s a track on Nine Inch Nails’ debut that foreshadows two of Trent Reznor’s future career highlights. Halfway through Pretty Hate Machine, Reznor breaks from the industrial program for the somber ballad “Something I Can Never Have.” By The Downward Spiral (1994), he’d perfect this form with “Hurt,” a song later transformed into a hymn by Johnny Cash. But “Something I Can Never Have” also sounds like film music. Even at the start of his career with Nine Inch Nails, Reznor displayed Academy Award-worthy skills.

I still recall the taste of your tears
Echoing your voice just like the ringing in my ears
My favorite dreams of you still wash ashore
Scraping through my head till I don’t want to sleep anymore

“The Becoming” from The Downward Spiral (1994)

Reznor stood apart from most industrial rock bands because he had a pop instinct the others either lacked or shunned. Beneath the distortion and bit-crushed chaos lay deep grooves and hooks. There’s no reality where I want to f–k you like an animal becomes an anthem without its slinking groove and earworm chorus. But The Downward Spiral is full of gems beyond “Closer,” “March of the Pigs,” and “Hurt.” “The Becoming” stands tall on NIN’s masterpiece album. Nearly three minutes in, there’s a gorgeous acoustic surprise as Reznor directs the narrator’s decaying soul toward a flicker of hope.

Hiding, backwards inside of me
I feel so unafraid
Annie, hold a little tighter
I might just slip away

“34 Ghosts IV” from Ghosts I–IV (2008)

This was a deep cut until “Old Town Road” became one of the biggest songs on the planet. The story goes that Lil Nas X dropped $30 to buy an instrumental track featuring this NIN sample from “34 Ghosts IV.” Then he wrote one of the biggest-selling singles in history. But before it became a country rap hit, it appeared in Nine Inch Nails’ sixth studio album within nearly two hours of ambient and mostly instrumental compositions.

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