Song of the Day: Nine Inch Nails, "We're in This Together"

Whose idea was it to get "We're in This Together" in the first trailer for the Avengers movie? I'd like to shake his or her hand.



In the days before pre-release streaming, "We're in This Together" was first heard on The Fragile, the most labyrinthine rock album from the king of labyrinthine records. Five years after he had shaken up mainstream rock with The Downward Spiral, Trent Reznor emerged with a declaration of loyalty and a video that paid tribute to Fritz Lang's Metropolis.



Last year, Reznor was interviewed on NPR. Terri Gross played a clip from "Head Like a Hole" and asked him what mindset he was in he was in when he wrote it in 1989. "I don't have a great answer for that," he responded. "I don't regularly spend a lot of time thinking about the darkest period of my life. What was I thinking in 1989 when I wrote that song? I can't tell you off the top of my head."

That answer makes sense--he's not 23 anymore, and it's probably easier to play that song every night without the weight of an emotional connection to it. With that in mind, Nine Inch Nails stopped playing "We're in This Together" years ago.