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Down in It
Nine Inch Nails song From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"Down in It" is the debut single by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released on September 15, 1989. Taken from the band's debut album Pretty Hate Machine, it was the first song ever written by frontman Trent Reznor.
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Production
The song's outro contains lyrics referencing the nursery rhyme "Rain Rain Go Away". Similarities to the song "Dig It" from Skinny Puppy's 1986 album Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse were noted shortly after the single's release.[4] Reznor later admitted his original demo version was "a total rip-off."[5]
Release
Initially released only on vinyl, a CD version of the single was later created after the success of the album. The first track on the single edition, "Down in It (Skin)", is the mix found on Pretty Hate Machine. The cover art is very similar to Joy Division's first album Unknown Pleasures, with Joy Division always being cited as an influence by Reznor, and Nine Inch Nails later covered the Joy Division song "Dead Souls" on the soundtrack to the 1994 film The Crow.
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Promotion
Around the time of the single's release, the band lip-synced a performance of the song on the dance music show Dance Party USA.[6] The footage, originally thought to be lost, was rediscovered in 2012 and went viral after being uploaded to YouTube. Reznor responded to the video on his Twitter account, stating that the band had decided to appear on the show after deciding it was "the most absurd choice [they] could come up with at the time" for a television program on which they would be interested in performing, but were surprised when they were actually booked to appear on the program.[6]
Releases
- TVT Records TVT 2611 – 12" Vinyl
- TVT Records TVT 2611-2 – CD
The single was included in the 2015 Record Store Day–Black Friday exclusive box set Halo I–IV.[7][8]
Music video
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Perspective
A music video for "Down in It", filmed on location in the Warehouse District of Chicago, was released in September 1989. It was produced by Jim Deloye and directed by Eric Zimmerman and Benjamin Stokes for H-Gun Productions.[9] Special effects were applied to scenes such as a television set falling down forwards and backwards, writing in lights, and strobe flashing. In the video, Reznor runs to the top of a building while Chris Vrenna and Richard Patrick follow him. The original version of the music video ended with the implication that Reznor's character had fallen or jumped off the building, seen lying on the ground with a deathly pallor created by applying starch powder to his face.[10] MTV edited the scene out of all airings.[11] To film the ending of the video, Zimmerman and Stokes used a camera tied to a balloon, with ropes attached to prevent it from flying away. Minutes after they started filming, the ropes snapped and the balloons and camera flew away; eventually landing in a cornfield in Michigan.[10] The farmer later handed it to the FBI, who began investigating whether the footage was a snuff film portraying a person committing suicide.[12][13] The FBI identified Reznor,[14] who later remarked, "Somebody at the FBI had been watching too much Hitchcock or David Lynch or something."[15]
Reznor stated the following in an interview with Convulsion Magazine:
There was a scene w[h]ere I was lying on the ground, appearing to be dead, in a Lodger-esque pose and we had a camera with a big weather balloon filled with helium hooked up to it ... the first one we did, we started the film, I was laying on the ground and the ropes that were holding the balloon snapped, the camera just took off into the atmosphere ... the camera landed two hundred miles away in a farmer's field somewhere. He finds it and takes it to the police, thinking that it's a surveillance camera for marijuana, they develop the film and think that it's some sort of snuff film of a murder, give it to the FBI and have pathologists looking at the body saying, 'yeah, he's rotting,' (I had corn starch on me, right) 'he's been decomposing for 3 weeks.' You could see the other members of the band walking away and they had these weird outfits on, and they thought it was some kind of gang slaying.[12]
Police distributed flyers asking for leads and were contacted by an art student who worked for H-Gun and recognised the image from the video.[10][12][16] Establishing Reznor was alive and well, in September 1990 the Chicago Police Department told reporters, "The bottom line is we don't have a body and we don't have mystery or homicide."[10] The story was covered by the television news magazine show Hard Copy on their March 3, 1991 episode,[17] which Reznor called, "Total junk gossip exploitative journalism. That was the icing on the cake: getting on the worst TV show in America."[15] Despite the sensationalist tone of the report, which likened "Down In It" video footage to a "satanic ritual" of "cult-like murder", the band's label used the controversy as a promotional tool, with clips from the Hard Copy interview included on an Island Records press kit for the UK release of Pretty Hate Machine.[18]
At least two versions of the music video exist - one around 3:50 in length using the "Skin" remix also found on the Pretty Hate Machine album[19] and a longer 6:58 edit using the "Shred" remix.[9]
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Critical reception
At the time of release, Billboard described the 12-inch single as an "Aggressive midtempo technonumber with an industrial edge that is easily accessible."[20] The single edition of the song was largely panned by AllMusic reviewer Christian Huey, who described the two remixes included as inferior to the original. Since all three tracks were later released on the "Head Like a Hole" single, he labeled the "Down in It" single as "completely superfluous and useful only to NIN completists".[21]
Describing the 6:58 version of the music video in a Billboard review segment for "club-oriented artists", Bill Coleman said, "Hard, funky techno number drives even harder with an appropriate clip that rams the point home with fast editing of potent industrial scenes and images,"[9] later simply calling it a "fab video".[22]
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Covers, soundtrack appearances and legacy
A remix of "Down in It" was used in an early 1990s Gatorade television advertisement. Originally, "Steppin' Out" by Joe Jackson was to be featured in the commercial, but Jackson declined the offer. Reznor unsuccessfully sued the production company who created the commercial for copyright infringement after he saw it in 1993, accusing them for illegal use of the song without permission.[23]
Track listing
All tracks remixed by Adrian Sherwood and Keith LeBlanc.
Year-end charts
References
External links
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