"I wasn’t concerned if people who liked The Downward Spiral would like this": Trent Reznor on the making of Nine Inch Nails' epic 1999 masterpiece The Fragile

Trent Reznor in 1999 — (Image credit: Frank Micelotta/ImageDirect)

Twenty-five years ago, Nine Inch Nails kicked off the campaign for the record that would change the course of Trent Reznor’s career. Their 1994 masterpiece The Downward Spiral had made the industrial-rock dynamos huge but Reznor had no interest in repeating the trick. Instead, The Fragile gently ushered in ambient experimentation and atmospheric soundscapes alongside the anguished electro anthems. This was where the seeds of Reznor’s hugely successful career as a film composer were sown.

The record was heralded by the release of first single The Day The World Went Away on July 20, 1999. It was the signal that fans should extinguish any expectations that The Fragile would be The Downward Spiral 2.0, a slow-burning epic that swerves from twisted guitars to hushed, menacing verses, has no discernible and doesn’t have any drums on it.

In an interview around the release of the record, Reznor explained that he was determined to break new ground. “With this one, I didn’t go into it trying to emulate what I did in the past,” Reznor said. “I wasn’t that concerned if people who liked The Downward Spiral would like this because I was a different person on this record than I was on Downward Spiral. I allowed myself to take the time to try things I wouldn’t have done in the past. The whole way through it we thought we were onto something that was really interesting. We started with some really weird things and towards the end moved into more of the song songs on the record, more vocal things. I’m proud of it.”

Explaining the five-year gap between The Fragile and its predecessor, Reznor said it was due to the huge tour that followed The Downward Spiral, production work for other artists and eventual burnout. “I didn’t feel that passionate about starting a new album so I kind of wasted time for a little while, a year,” he said. “When I finally did start it, it ended up taking two years, that’s where the five years went. Two years to make a record is an exceptionally long time. We worked pretty much every day of those two years, on tons of ideas because I was in the process of experimenting. I stumbled into some new things, things that took me to new places and that went on and on and on and on and wound up being this record.”

Watch the interview below:

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Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, Champions Journal, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleague Ted Kessler. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he's interviewed some of the world's biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Radiohead, Liam and Noel Gallagher, Florence + The Machine, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more.