Nine Inch Nails is my favorite band of all time. If you’re not following Trent Reznor on twitter you should because he is TSTH [ too sassy to handle]. And if you live under a rock or simply don’t give a shit don’t know you can download NIN’s latest album for free.

Anyway, the day I discovered NIN I was 14 long after NIN had been around. I had heard of NIN but never heard any music by NIN.

God Given – NIN

14 is a weird age because around 12 is when your brain starts to make this great stride in cognitive ability. You start to understand more, you’re able to abstract, you kind of realize there is this whole world and not just this small area of familiarity, if that makes any sense.

Usually, music wise, at 12 there is a shift from the music you listen to and I think it’s because of this cognitive leap. You go from this kind of generic shitty music to another kind of generic shitty music that you probably think is more deep. You’re hitting puberty, your brain is growing this is kind of everyone’s angry phase. N’Sync is lame all of a sudden.

If you’re apart of my generation this means Nu-Metal. Mmm mmm! Delicious, awful, one of the worst things to happen to music– Nu Metal.

With You – Linkin Park

I can still taste the simplistic, angsty lyrics, I can feel the black band T-shirts from Hot Topic rubbing against my skin. Yum leather wrist bands.  “Fuck yeah, I like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, you got a probably Fagoosh?” We were all hardcore in Junior High.

14 was the age where I more actively started using the internet. I had heard a NIN song on the radio kind of liked it and in this pre-torrenting world I decided to just Kazaa a bunch of songs. It was my first exposure to music that felt like more than music, and it’s not that NIN is the deepest band in the whole history of ever or the best band in the whole history of ever, there was just something different about it. I was really only familiar with Top 40 at this point… MTV still played some videos, the radio played Nickelback and Staind…

It was the first time I heard songs that weren’t just made… they were constructed. It was interesting, new, fast, loud, angry and it felt more genuine. Now Linkin Park seemed fake, Limp Bizkit was god awful… we live by comparison, I guess. Now we only listen to Nu-Metal ironically. Phase over.

After a certain age and I don’t mean old age, I mean during adolescence your music tastes have pretty much settled in. Unless NIN puts out a country album I’d probably buy it cause why the fuck not? I think I’ll be listening to this band forever.

But the point of this post isn’t just NIN ego massaging. It’s about fanaticism. People will spend hundreds, thousands of dollars to see Madonna or Britney. People who know she sucks, know she is a puppet, a cookie cutter product, get defensive about her. None of them are fans of all the handlers, song writers, producers, stylists, choreographers, none of them could give a shit about all the things that make her “great.”

Kill The Lights – Britney Spears

I get defensive about NIN. People get defensive about Limp Bizkit.

We’re not personal friends with any of these people. Chances are we’ll just be disappointed in some way if we meet them. But as soon as anyone tries to insult the likes of our favorite musicians, even if we know they suck, even if we know that sometimes they are kind of douchey or not even legitimate artists, it’s like… “How dare you insult the very fabric of my existence!”

Truth be told if I wasn’t listening to NIN, I’d just be listening to something else. But that’s the case for most things we do.

I don’t understand fanatacism even though I am guilty of it. I don’t know if it’s about vicariously living through someone’s greatness, I don’t know if it’s feeling apart of something, I don’t know if it’s because these artists speak to us in some profound way… I don’t know.

But what I do know is is that music is really important, it just is. It is a reflection of the times no matter how shitty it gets, no matter how redundant, we always want more music. Our brains just need it…

/shrug, I dunno are you a fan?

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