"Pretty Hate Machine" was Nine Inch Nails' first album. It first came out in 1989. The songs "Down In It", "Head Like A Hole", and "Sin" became famous from the radio and MTV.
In 1992, Nine Inch Nails made a short album called "Broken". It had only eight songs. The song "Wish" won a Grammy Award. Another album, called "Fixed", has some of the same songs as "Broken", but other musicians have changed the music and added new sounds. It was initially going to be one studio album (with eleven tracks, the eight tracks on Broken as tracks 1-8 and tracks 4-6 on Fixed as tracks 9-11), making it the second studio album and "Downward Spiral" the third studio album, but decided to split it in half due to personal reasons and it was not the second studio album.
Nine Inch Nails played the very first Lolapalooza tour alongside Jane's Addiction and other bands.
A new album called "The Downward Spiral" came out in 1994. It is the most popular and famous Nine Inch Nails album. Music stores have sold more than 4 million copies of "The Downward Spiral" all together. The songs "Closer", "March Of The Pigs", and "Hurt" were very popular on MTV and radio stations. Trent Reznor asked many other musicians to make remixes from the songs. The remixes were released on a new album called "Further Down The Spiral".
In 1994, Nine Inch Nails played at the Woodstock 94 concert in New York. After that, they became one of the most famous bands in the world. For five years, there were no Nine Inch Nails albums or concerts. Many fans worried that the band they liked would stop making music forever.
Finally, a new album came out in 1999. It was called "The Fragile". It was the longest album Nine Inch Nails had ever made, and the music was very different from the old albums. It was initially going to release in fall 1997 (and was also going to include "The Perfect Drug") but got pushed back due to personal problems and The Perfect Drug was never put on the album. Many of the songs were only music with no words. Songs like that are called "instrumentals". Writers who write about music wrote good things about "The Fragile" in many magazines and newspapers. People knew the music of Nine Inch Nails had changed, but many people thought it was better than before.
Even though many people liked the album, it would still take Trent Reznor another five years to make another one. This was due to Trent Reznor drinking and becoming addicted to other drugs. He is now healthy. Trent also argued with his manager John Malm over how much money he should make. The court has agreed with Trent and John is no longer Trent's manager.
Nine Inch Nails' next album was called "With Teeth". When the song "The Hand That Feeds" was first played on the radio, fans were very happy that Nine Inch Nails had come back. The second song on the album to be played on the radio is "Only" and the third is "Every Day Is Exactly The Same".
Year Zero came out on April 17, 2007. Before it came out, there was a game that people could play. You could find clues to discover more about the story. That kind of game is called an "Alternate Reality Game". Only one "single" came out. That song is called "Survivalism".
On March 2, 2008, the albums "Ghosts I-IV" (1 to 4) came out. It was made of 4 small albums Ghosts 1, 2, 3 and 4. All the songs on these albums were instrumentals and the first album was free to download from the website, or available cheaply to download. This was new in the way that music is sold, because usually music is sold for lots of money, and the money is given to many people, most who did not make the music, but helped give money to the people who did, or sent the music to shops to be sold, or made adverts for it.
After two months since the release of "Ghosts I-IV", a new album came out called "The Slip" on May 5, 2008. "The Slip" was released in three formats for free.
The latest Nine Inch Nails' album, "Hesitation Marks" (2013), was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 2014 Grammy Awards.
Trent Reznor makes almost all of the music for Nine Inch Nails. He is the only member.
When Nine Inch Nails plays at concerts, other musicians are also part of the band. The musicians who play in Nine Inch Nails are not always the same. Now, Trent Reznor sings and plays some instruments, Robin Finck plays the guitar, Justin Meldal-Johnsen plays the bass guitar, and Ilan Rubin plays the drums.
Remixing
In remixing, a person (often a recording engineer or record producer or lyrics producer) takes a familiar song, splits it into different parts called "tracks", and changes the song's music, instruments, layout, and or vocals to create a new version of the same song. It is called "remixing" due to mixing being the putting together of all the parts of a song, and "remixing" being the putting together of the parts of the song differently than the original.
Remixers, that is, people who remix, are musicians who use a variety of tools, primarily electronic, to create the new song versions. Remixing can be simply moving song parts around; it can also be creating new music for an old song lyric. There are two common kinds of remixing: production and mashups. Production remixing uses new instruments with the old song vocal, and mashups use two old songs mixed together to create a new song.
It is pertinent to mention that the remix of R. Kelly and Beyonce's song "If I were a boy" shows that remixing also involves the editing of the words of a music to publicize more enlightenment gained from over time listening and attuning of the soul to the music by the general public. This tells musicians to be cautious about the wordings of their music. The wordings are as beautiful as the sound the soul hears, because the soul listens to the music and not the ears necessarily. A fine captivating lyrics with poor musical sound can last for many uncountable centuries as most captivating music than a music with a captivating sound but poor lyrics. Events of our daily life can be used to produce remix for most music we have lived out innocently. This is a very green field opportunity for upcoming remixers. E.g. One can do a remix about Dolly Parton's song - Jolene capturing the insecurity of a woman in keeping her man because of her inferior outlook to that of a woman who in her seemed inferior outlook discovers the confidence that Jolene in her air of superiority can never and will never ever be able to take her man even if she looks like the moon on a very dark night or the twinkle stars decorating the dark clouds at night.
Then after some years of listening to it, another remixer releases another insight on why Jolene has to stop exerting that air of superiority on the women around her, seeing she has done so much harm to the concept 'love'. And it can go on and on, bringing out the best styles, tactics and ideology to love better in diversified ways making us more sane with love rather than being insane.
An African can choose to do a remix where Jolene is welcomed by Dolly Parton to share her man with her seeing that it is part of our African religion and we have it as a responsibility to polish it to gold. Music without its lyrics properly guided is dead, this is majorly the essence of remixing. Sounds would be exhausted but knowledge cannot be exhausted and knowledge is an embodiment of the lyrics and not the sound. Tu-face Idibia, P-Square and the rest can explore this.
"Production remixing" requires more musical knowledge than mashups, because one must make their own music. This music generally is within the same key and has the same rhythm or melody as the old song.