cover of the week: scary monsters
mp3: nine inch nails – scary monsters (w/ david bowie)
i’m still working on that top 100 update.. one of the more difficult things in creating these kinds of lists, i think, is determining how to rank albums/artists that you were once fervently obsessed with but haven’t listened to or even really thought about in years. nine inch nails is a perfect example of this. back in my middle school days, i honestly constructed what one might call a small shrine to trent reznor in the corner of my bedroom. fast forward a decade later and the number of plays nine inch nails has accumulated over almost 3 years of last.fm audioscrobbling is less than the number that once streamed through my ears on a near daily basis.
that history automatically qualifies what i’ve decided is (was?) my favorite nin album for the list, but it also seriously impairs whatever ability i might have to judge an album objectively. this is further complicated by my theory that my changing relationship with the music is not due to an evolution in my musical taste, but rather to a change in my general outlook on life. i imagine that with a significant enough change in mindset, i would find reznor’s music to be every bit as compelling as i once did. from one vantage point this is top ten stuff. from another, it might not even make the short list. it’s like sitting in the optometrist’s chair, as she cycles between lenses of varying strength… which looks better, 1 or 2? it’s always a bit of a crap shoot.
you might say that i had little difficulty in placing the downward spiral at #70 on the inaugural edition of the list. but i was quickly disappointed with my ordering last year and as a result, i’m spending a tremendous amount of time in the hopes of getting it right this time. if the album ends up in the same position, it will be sheer coincidence.
while i may be devoting a bit too much of my time to what most might call a fairly trivial exercise, it does have its benefits. this cover of “scary monsters (and super creeps)”, for instance, would likely never have been remembered as a potential candidate for this feature if the top 100 revision hadn’t forced me to re-examine the neglected sections of my musical library. it comes from a bootleg known as children of the night, recorded during nin’s 1995 tour with bowie .
the following two songs are not covers, but collaborations, included because i presume most people interested in hearing nine inch nails cover bowie would be just as interested in hearing bowie sing a bit of nine inch nails. he gets somewhat lost in the onslaught that is “reptile”, but you can’t miss bowie on “hurt”.
all and all, i’m glad to have revisited these , if only for an afternoon.
mp3: nine inch nails – reptile (w/ david bowie)
mp3: nine inch nails – hurt (w/ david bowie)
[buy the downward spiral]
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