I have been doing a fair amount of programming lately and undoubtedly this leads to counterproductive lifestyle behaviors while I am deep “in the code.” Obvious examples include eating pizza three or more times a day, drinking a couple gallons of coffee (always black) at a sitting, failure to exercise (or even leave my chair for that matter), and listening to music at volumes that are generally reserved for the decks of aircraft carriers. In most cases the music is some mix of metal, techno, or industrial (or in this case all three.) Because of recent soundtracks for “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Social Network”, I have degenerated to listening to everything ever produced by Trent Reznor. A habit, I am curtain, will continue until I burn it out of my system and move on to something moderately less abusive… like maybe The Prodigy??!?
So as not to be alone in my depravity, here is the current Top 11 list of favorite Nine Inch Nails/Trent Reznor songs in order of preference:
- The Hand That Feeds, With Teeth
- Dead Souls, The Crow Soundtrack
- Immigrant Song, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Soundtrack
- Head Like A Hole, Pretty Hate Machine
- In Motion, The Social Network Soundtrack
- Just Like You Imagined, The Fragile
- We’re In This Together, The Fragile
- Terrible Lie, Pretty Hate Machine
- Hurt, The Downward Spiral
- Closer, The Downward Spiral
- Only, With Teeth
And while it probably deserves its own list here is an excellent sampling of some of Trent’s slower tempo ballads:
- Hurt, The Downward Spiral
- Something I Can Never Have, Natural Born Killers Soundtrack
- Leaving Hope, And All That Could Have Been