The Frail / Wretched
The Big Come Down
The Great Below
Somewhat Damaged
Just Like You Imagined
Sorry, I tried to narrow them down, but my list is stuck at 14 and I’m not willing to cut anymore off the list…and that’s just from the original CD tracklisting!! Just another example as to why it’s my favorite album…of all time…by any artist. Thanks, TR.
The number would significantly jump if I included +Appendage from the cassette release, 10MH and TNF from the vinyl release, b-sides from Still and Things Falling Apart, couple of tracks from Deviations 1, etc…
The day the world went away
The way out is through
The new flesh (it counts imo)
WITT
The fragile/somewhat damaged (can't choose between)
Difficult to choose, but here we go:
1. Please
2. The Day the World went Away
3. The Way out is Through
4. The great below
5. Somewhat Damaged
I'd cast off...
No, you don't
Pilgrimage
Even Deeper
Where is everybody?
The big come down
I can't imagine how so many people dislike pilgrimage. Amazing song, perfect opening song for the band to take the stage to.
Assuming we're talking songs released on one of the three original 1999 versions of the album, no "from that era" shit and no Deviations material:
Somewhat Damaged
La Mer
10 Miles High
Underneath It All
Just Like You Imagined
Restricting this list to 5 is such complete and utter bullshit BTW. There are so many that are interchangeable with one another in terms of my love for them, I think all of them aside from Starfuckers and Where is Everybody are borderline essential to the record and it's a weaker project without them, what makes many of these songs so powerful is how they flow into one another, call back to each other and interact within the larger space of the sequencing of the record to begin with and to start lopping off and isolating them takes a lot of the power out of them. Complication on its own is a neat little oddity but in context is a powerful, sweeping and doom-approaching ride into the very end of a very long, very bleak journey and Underneath it All is a weird and strange little piece in isolation but in context is the final words of someone who has completely given up hope, succumbed to the cancer that was eating away at them from the very start and completely numbed out, resigned to their fate and utterly hopeless, any and all desperation or energy in the vocals from other songs now removed and any illusions of power completely cast aside. You can't get that on its own.
I can't say which 5 I would remove because there are not 5 songs that I would want to remove.
How anybody could think The New Flesh is not the cat's pajamas is beyond me
Pretty difficult to narrow it down to 5 tracks but here goes nothing:
The Great Below
Somewhat Damaged
We're In This Together
The Big Come Down
Even Deeper
Where is Everybody? is awesome and should have been a single among with No, You Dont. Both of the (Version) edits rock.
WIE should have been played live too, its a shame it wasnt, even though Closure remembers it, it was probably rehearsed tho.
While I type this, im listening to JLYI, and im glad the consensus is that song is awesome. It wasn't played at the Fragility show I went to, and im jelly of anyone who saw it at the final Wave Goodbye shows
I agree that the Things Falling Apart version rules.
That said, the original has some of the darkest, most menacing lyrics in NIN's discography and one of Reznor's most sinister deliveries. It's hopeless, it's that machine-side persona from TDS brought to life again, it's thoroughly unsettling and absolutely personifies all of the ugliest, nastiest feelings of self-loathing and destruction a person can experience. It creeps in, it seeps around your ears and before you know it something that seemed to start so softly has become corrosive and punishing in its groaning, endless and dragging oppression. That static effect on Trent beginning to scream, any showing of strong emotion stifled, no amount of shouting capable of overcoming that same distorted consuming machinery that ate away at the end of Eraser, the muffled and buried-beneath-the-mix gleeful moaning about becoming something numb at the end of it all, the worst parts of someone's personality triumphant -- it's incredible to me.
Somewhat Damaged
The Day The World Went Away
The Wretched
Fragile
We're In This Together
Runner-up:
Just Like You Imagined
Anyone else get disappointed when listening to the album version of The Frail and it doesn't include that added haunting piano section from AATCHB? Same thing with Gone, Still compared to the video version.
01 Somewhat Damaged
02 Into The Void
03 Pilgrimage
04 I'm Looking Forward To Joining You, Finally
05 Starfuckers, Inc.
Since Deviations came out, ive found a whole new appreciation for Im Looking Forward To Joining You, Finally. Especially the percussion in the later part of the song, and that funky bass riff.
Definitely moving up on my list. When I was younger, my favorites were the obvious tracks having only had the previous 3 albums as refrence, Somewhat Damaged and The Wretched. Now that im a little older, not full of teenage agnst anymore, and my tastes have matured a little, tracks like 10 Miles High and Where is Everybody? do it for me now when I disregarded them in the past.
Don't know how I'll feel about this three hours from now.
1. The Big Come Down
2. The Great Below
3. The Wretched
4. I'm Looking Forward To Joining You, Finally
5. Even Deeper
Somewhat Damaged
The Day The World Went Away
The Wretched
We're In This Together
The Fragile
Honorable mention to the Big Come Down.
I see some of you don't like restrictive lists, but I think they're fun.
Can I use TFA too, though? We wanted The Frail (Remix) played when my wife walked down the aisle, but there wasn't a sound system in the part of the church where we got married.
Hmmmm...I guess I'll do whatever the fuck I want?
Ok
1. Please
2. The Frail (version) -Eustis
3. Where Is Everybody (version) - Telefon Tel Aviv/Renholder
3.. Even Deeper
2.Just Like You Imagined
1.Somewhat Damaged
Ripe (With Decay) - “ahhhh…ahh-uhh-ahhh..” fading into those guitar chords, and then those chords abruptly coming to a halt is the best way to end an album. Always needs decay at the end.
10 Miles High
Just Like You Imagined - possibly one of the best song titles ever.
Underneath It All
The Great Below - technically the second best way to end an album. Or the first half of a two-parter.
Honorable mention: The Way Out Is Through - another best song title ever.
Exactly! That's the only thing I don't like about the Definitive Edition, there's no Decay, which I feel is a much better ending to the album.
My Top Five, in no order:
- Somewhat Damaged
- The Day The World Went Away
- We're In This Together
- The Fragile
- Ripe (With Decay)
I'd maybe swap out Ripe (With Decay) for La Mer, The Big Come Down or In The Void. It's very hard to choose only five songs from an essentially perfect album.
- Even Deeper
- Where Is Everybody?
- Into the Void
- The Fragile
- La Mer
Pretty Close Top 5: The Big Come Down, We're In This Together, Complication, The Great Below, No You Don't