Leona Lewis to cover Nine Inch Nails track ‘Hurt’

‘Hurt’ was written as the final note in the self-destruction of ‘The Downward Spiral’ in 1994 by Trent Reznor.

I bought The Downward Spiral when I was seventeen, in 2009, probably one of the worst years of my life so far (although, I am only 20 now, who knows what’s to come?). I had already heard Hurt before, but never after the thirteen tracks that preceded it. Framed in that album, and in my state of mind, it resonated with me like so many pieces of music have done and would and still continue to do.

‘I… hurt myself today’

The initial line originally made me wince, to cower in the thought that my new favourite band would be thought of as part of that ’emo’ type of music everyone mocked. But again, framed anew, with the broken sound surrounding the track, the dissonant quality of the music, it spoke volumes…

‘to see if I still feel…’

This was a song written after the initial self-loathing and mournful debut album of Pretty Hate Machine and the anarchic and beyond angry EP Broken. It came at the end of a totally destroyed album, with production thrown through a blender, missing the cleanliness of Pretty Hate Machine and the compression of Broken, popping in and out of volume and dynamics.

‘I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real’

The cries and horrifying samples of ‘The Downward Spiral’ and ‘Reptile’ created in the murder home of Sharon Tate, a Hollywood actress killed by Charles Manson’s cult. ‘Closer’ also appears on the album, perhaps the second most famous NIN song about animalistic sex. The contrast of content in the album and the barrage of extreme emotion and feeling came down to this, the death rattle, punctuated by the sound of moving air behind the vocals and the guitar.

‘The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting”

The Downward Spiral isn’t my favourite album, it isn’t even my favourite Nine Inch Nails album, but it I still think it’s one of the best crafted albums of the 90s, up there of course with Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’. Two albums, released on the same year and so totally different, yet so totally ahead of their time, sonically and creatively.

“Tried to kill it all away, but I remember… everything.”

Imagine Leona Lewis singing that lyric. Just imagine it.

“What have I become, my sweetest friend?”

I felt something similar to this when The X Factor announced that Leonard Cohen’s song ‘Hallelujah’ would be the winner’s song in 2008. I had just started listening to my mum’s copy of Grace that had been sat amongst my parents’ record collection since 1994. My mum was interested in Jeff because she liked his father Tim Buckley. I ripped the CD to my iTunes on the 1/11/08 and it changed my life. (My acquisition of The Downward Spiral is not as clear, as I gained a few songs by other means before actually buying the album and distinctly remembering trying to find a better quality version of Hurt before realising it was supposed to sound like that).

“Everyone I know, goes away in the end”

Jeff Buckley’s version (the definitive version, in mine and many others’ opinions) got to No.2, losing out to Alexandra Burke’s version (Burke would go on to produce such masterpieces as ‘Bad Boys’, thanks for that Simon). However, victory was felt at least for getting the best version of that song back into the general public. (The next year of course would see the Rage Against The Machine song ‘Killing In The Name’ – by no means any equal to Hallelujah – beat The X Factor and give no credit to the previous year’s campaign). Hallelujah is a powerful and irreverent song from one of the best recorded albums in history. It evokes as much power as ‘Hurt’ and it wasn’t even written by Buckley.

“And you could have it all…”

Rick Rubin requested ‘Hurt’ from Trent Reznor in 2002. Reznor had just overcome his addictions to alcohol and hard drugs and was working on his comeback ‘With Teeth’ (coincidentally my favourite NIN album, if you were wondering). Johnny Cash would have this song as an addition to American IV. It has often been said that ‘Hurt’ became Cash’s song after this, even Reznor himself said:

I pop the video in, and wow… Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps… Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn’t mine anymore… It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure

“…my empire of dirt.”

Yet, Nine Inch Nails went back on tour, with Reznor being an incredibly changed person (mentally and physically). The song resonated more than ever. ‘Hurt’ was on the setlist of the first With Teeth show in Fresno, California on 23/03/2005 and stayed a live staple. It was now not sung by an alcoholic and drug addict, but by someone in recovery, someone who had overcome the hurt. I’ve been lucky enough to see it being played twice… and it was awesome.

“I will let you down…”

The only times Trent Reznor hasn’t stood in front of a crowd and played that song from the heart since is when someone would not understand, shout out for another song, and in frustration, anger and despair at that person not understanding, he would stop playing. The song is about destruction, but it is also about redemption. Once Leona Lewis almost overdoses from heroin then she can sing this fucking song.

“…I will make you hurt.”

disclaimer: the final line of my post was meant in a purely ironic sense, which is hard to distinguish on the internet apparently. (read: it was a joke, sorry if my British sense of humour isn’t well received.)