Trent Reznor appeared as a recent guest on Rick Rubin’s podcast Tetragrammaton. Over the course of their two-hour conversation, the Nine Inch Nails mastermind spoke at length about his musical upbringing, songwriting process, and interest in film scoring.
“To me the hardest thing is the songwriting,” Reznor explained. “Having something to say, something to say with truth, that has reason to exist rather than just a thing.”
He’s even found that truth in his new-found appreciation for pop music, something he attributes to his children. “For while, I kept them in a kind of hermetically sealed way from pop music. Because I think it sucks generally — I had thought that.”
“And I heard my daughter, who’s six, singing Dua Lipa the other day,” Reznor recounted. “She is so into it and it is so cool. Like this is her music, you know, this is her thing… It really reminded me the art of writing a well-crafted song — I teared up listening to a Dua Lipa track. Because it was just a really well-done piece of music, you know? It was clever. It felt good.”
“It’s a difficult thing to do. I don’t know how to do that,” Reznor continued. “When I’m trying to think of what to say, I’m saying it from the unvarnished me. And that requires me thinking about who I am and where my position is now and all of that together becomes something that feels the stakes are higher.”
It’s for that reason that Reznor has found comfort in film scoring. “Sitting there and arranging stuff — I know what’s right… I don’t have to assess my thoughts on how I feel about a thing,” he explained.
He continued, “What it comes down to is I really enjoy weirdly working in service to something. It’s like cracking a code. It feels good to crack the code, whatever it is.”