Down in It
Encyclopedia
"Down in It" is a song by American industrial rock
act Nine Inch Nails
, released in 1989. Released as the project's debut single
, the song was the first to be written by Trent Reznor
, the only constant member of the act. It was released as a teaser single prior to the group's debut album, Pretty Hate Machine
. The song's music video stirred criticism among the FBI, and spawned an investigation that focused on Reznor's character as a person who committed suicide.
, The Meeks, Sasha
and Tiga
. The songs' lyrics share similarities with those of "Only
," a track found on the album With Teeth
, released in 2005. The opening verse of Down in It contains the lyric "Just then a tiny little dot caught my eye," while the second verse of Only opens with the lyric "Well, the tiniest little dot caught my eye." In "Only," Trent elaborates on what that dot was ("a scab trying to seal itself shut"), while both songs also include several references to personal growth and change: "fading away" from the kind of person the protagonist once assumed himself to be and an uncertainty as to who they will inevitably become.
A remix of "Down in It" was used in a early 1990s Gatorade
television
advertisement. Originally, English pop music
ian Joe Jackson
's 1982 top 10 king "Steppin' Out
" was to be featured in the commercial, but Jackson declined the offer. After Reznor saw it on a TV set in 1993, he attempted to sue
the production company who created it by filing a copyright infringement
suit, accusing them for not having permission to use it, but this suit wasn't successful.
, a CD version was later created after the success of the album.
The first track on the single, "Down in It (skin)", is the mix that is found on Pretty Hate Machine. The cover art is very similar to Joy Division
's first album, Unknown Pleasures
. Joy Division has always been cited as an influence by Reznor, and he later covered their song "Dead Souls" on the soundtrack to The Crow
, and the Japanese and Deluxe Editions of The Downward Spiral
.
and Keith LeBlanc
)
for "Down in It", filmed on location in the Warehouse District of Chicago
by directors Eric Zimmerman
and Benjamin Stokes, was released in September 1989. It includes several somewhat elaborate effects, such as a television
set falling down forwards and backwards, light writing
and flashing, and follows the plot of Trent Reznor making his way to the top of a building, while two then-current members of the Nine Inch Nails live band
follow him.
The climax of the original version of the Eric Zimmerman
/Benjamin Stokes co-directed "Down in It" music video ended with the implication that Reznor's corn starch-covered character had fallen off a building and died in the street. MTV
censored this scene, editing it from all airings. This footage attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), who received the video cassette from a person who saw the footage.
To film the ending of the video, Zimmerman and Stokes had used a video camera tied to a balloon, so ropes were attached to prevent it from escaping the Chicago
-based Warehouse District building, the location where it was filmed. Minutes after they started filming using this technique, the ropes snapped and the balloons (and the camera) rose high into the atmosphere and — after traveling over 200 miles — landed on a farmer's field in Michigan
(where it was found by the person who showed the footage to the FBI). The music video generated controversy, and spawned an investigation to determine if it portrayed a person committing suicide
. The FBI classified the tape they received as a snuff film
, and identified the person appearing at the ending to be Reznor. The investigation ended when Reznor's manager demonstrated that Reznor was not dead and that the music video had nothing to do with any crime
or satanism
.
This story was covered by the news magazine show Hard Copy
on their March 5, 1991 episode.
" single, Allmusic labeled the "Down in It" single as "completely superfluous and useful only to NIN completists."
Industrial rock
Industrial rock is a musical genre that fuses industrial music and specific rock subgenres. Industrial rock spawned industrial metal, with which it is often confused...
act Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails
Nine Inch Nails is an American industrial rock project, founded in 1988 by Trent Reznor in Cleveland, Ohio. As its main producer, singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, Reznor is the only official member of Nine Inch Nails and remains solely responsible for its direction...
, released in 1989. Released as the project's debut single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
, the song was the first to be written by Trent Reznor
Trent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is also a member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30,...
, the only constant member of the act. It was released as a teaser single prior to the group's debut album, Pretty Hate Machine
Pretty Hate Machine
Pretty Hate Machine is the debut album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released October 20, 1989, on TVT Records. Pretty Hate Machine is compiled of reworked tracks from the Purest Feeling demo, as well as tracks recorded after its recording...
. The song's music video stirred criticism among the FBI, and spawned an investigation that focused on Reznor's character as a person who committed suicide.
Song information
"Down in It" was the first song Trent Reznor ever wrote and has been covered by Eric GorfainEric Gorfain
Eric Gorfain is an American violinist and leader of The Section Quartet.He has been classically trained since the age of four and later participated in orchestras throughout his studies at UCLA, where he became symphony concertmaster....
, The Meeks, Sasha
Sasha (DJ)
Sasha is a Welsh DJ and record producer. Sasha began his career playing acid house dance music in the late 1980s...
and Tiga
Tiga (musician)
Tiga is the stage name of Montreal-born DJ/producer Tiga James Sontag . His album Sexor won the 2007 Juno Award for Dance Recording of the Year.-Career:He graduated from Selwyn House School, a prestigious school in Westmount...
. The songs' lyrics share similarities with those of "Only
Only (Nine Inch Nails song)
"Only" is a song by Nine Inch Nails. It was released as the second single from Nine Inch Nails' fourth album With Teeth. "Only" reached number one on the Billboard Modern Rock chart, where it stayed for seven weeks...
," a track found on the album With Teeth
With Teeth
With Teeth is the fourth studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released on May 3, 2005, by Interscope Records. The album was produced by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and long-time collaborator Alan Moulder. It was Reznor's first original studio album since The...
, released in 2005. The opening verse of Down in It contains the lyric "Just then a tiny little dot caught my eye," while the second verse of Only opens with the lyric "Well, the tiniest little dot caught my eye." In "Only," Trent elaborates on what that dot was ("a scab trying to seal itself shut"), while both songs also include several references to personal growth and change: "fading away" from the kind of person the protagonist once assumed himself to be and an uncertainty as to who they will inevitably become.
A remix of "Down in It" was used in a early 1990s Gatorade
Gatorade
Gatorade is a brand of sports-themed food and beverage products, built around its signature product: a line of sports drinks. Gatorade is currently manufactured by PepsiCo, distributed in over 80 countries...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
advertisement. Originally, English pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
ian Joe Jackson
Joe Jackson (musician)
Joe Jackson is an English musician and singer-songwriter now living in Berlin, whose five Grammy Award nominations span from 1979 to 2001...
's 1982 top 10 king "Steppin' Out
Steppin' Out (Joe Jackson song)
"Steppin' Out" is a song written by Joe Jackson, originally included on his 1982 album, Night and Day.The song is about the anticipation and excitement of a night out on the town. Released as a single in August 1982, it became Jackson's biggest Billboard Hot 100 hit in the U.S., peaking at number...
" was to be featured in the commercial, but Jackson declined the offer. After Reznor saw it on a TV set in 1993, he attempted to sue
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
the production company who created it by filing a copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
suit, accusing them for not having permission to use it, but this suit wasn't successful.
Single release
"Down in It" was the first official Nine Inch Nails release and the first single from the album Pretty Hate Machine. Initially released only on vinylGramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
, a CD version was later created after the success of the album.
The first track on the single, "Down in It (skin)", is the mix that is found on Pretty Hate Machine. The cover art is very similar to Joy Division
Joy Division
Joy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. Originally named Warsaw, the band primarily consisted of Ian Curtis , Bernard Sumner , Peter Hook and Stephen Morris .Joy Division rapidly evolved from their initial punk rock influences...
's first album, Unknown Pleasures
Unknown Pleasures
Unknown Pleasures is the debut album by the English post-punk band Joy Division, released in 1979 through Factory Records. Martin Hannett produced the record at Strawberry Studios, Stockport, England. The album sold poorly upon release, but due to the subsequent success of Joy Division with the...
. Joy Division has always been cited as an influence by Reznor, and he later covered their song "Dead Souls" on the soundtrack to The Crow
The Crow (film)
The Crow is a 1994 American action film based on the 1989 comic book of the same name by James O'Barr. The film was written by David J. Schow and John Shirley, and directed by Alex Proyas...
, and the Japanese and Deluxe Editions of The Downward Spiral
The Downward Spiral
The Downward Spiral is the second studio album by American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails, released March 8, 1994, on Interscope Records. It is a concept album detailing the destruction of a man, from the beginning of his "downward spiral" to his climactic attempt at suicide...
.
Track listing
(all tracks remixed by Adrian SherwoodAdrian Sherwood
Adrian Sherwood is an English record producer best known for his work with dub music as well as for remixing a number of popular acts such as Coldcut, Depeche Mode, The Woodentops, Primal Scream, Pop Will Eat Itself, Sinéad O'Connor, and Skinny Puppy...
and Keith LeBlanc
Keith Leblanc
Keith Leblanc is an American drummer and record producer, and is a member of the bands Little Axe and Tackhead.His record, "No Sell Out", was the first sample based record. His career started out on Sugar Hill Records recording with rap pioneers, Grandmaster Flash and Melle Melle...
)
Music video
A music videoMusic video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
for "Down in It", filmed on location in the Warehouse District of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
by directors Eric Zimmerman
Eric Zimmerman
Eric Zimmerman is a game designer and the co-founder and CEO of Gamelab, a computer game development company, which is known for the game Diner Dash. Each year Zimmerman hosts the Game Design Challenge at the Game Developers Conference...
and Benjamin Stokes, was released in September 1989. It includes several somewhat elaborate effects, such as a television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
set falling down forwards and backwards, light writing
Light writing
Light writing is an emerging form of stop motion animation wherein still images captured using the technique known as light painting or light drawing are put in sequence thereby creating the optical illusion of movement for the viewer.- Technique :...
and flashing, and follows the plot of Trent Reznor making his way to the top of a building, while two then-current members of the Nine Inch Nails live band
Nine Inch Nails live performances
Nine Inch Nails, an industrial rock band fronted by Trent Reznor, did various live performances throughout the world, including tours in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Japan, and China. While Reznor controls the creative and musical direction of Nine Inch Nails in-studio, the...
follow him.
The climax of the original version of the Eric Zimmerman
Eric Zimmerman
Eric Zimmerman is a game designer and the co-founder and CEO of Gamelab, a computer game development company, which is known for the game Diner Dash. Each year Zimmerman hosts the Game Design Challenge at the Game Developers Conference...
/Benjamin Stokes co-directed "Down in It" music video ended with the implication that Reznor's corn starch-covered character had fallen off a building and died in the street. MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
censored this scene, editing it from all airings. This footage attracted the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(FBI), who received the video cassette from a person who saw the footage.
To film the ending of the video, Zimmerman and Stokes had used a video camera tied to a balloon, so ropes were attached to prevent it from escaping the Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
-based Warehouse District building, the location where it was filmed. Minutes after they started filming using this technique, the ropes snapped and the balloons (and the camera) rose high into the atmosphere and — after traveling over 200 miles — landed on a farmer's field in Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
(where it was found by the person who showed the footage to the FBI). The music video generated controversy, and spawned an investigation to determine if it portrayed a person committing suicide
Self-harm
Self-harm or deliberate self-harm includes self-injury and self-poisoning and is defined as the intentional, direct injuring of body tissue most often done without suicidal intentions. These terms are used in the more recent literature in an attempt to reach a more neutral terminology...
. The FBI classified the tape they received as a snuff film
Snuff film
A snuff film is a motion picture genre that depicts the actual death or murder of a person or people, without the aid of special effects, for the express purpose of distribution and entertainment or financial exploitation. For-profit snuff films are generally regarded as an urban legend, whose...
, and identified the person appearing at the ending to be Reznor. The investigation ended when Reznor's manager demonstrated that Reznor was not dead and that the music video had nothing to do with any crime
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
or satanism
Satanism
Satanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...
.
This story was covered by the news magazine show Hard Copy
Hard Copy
Hard Copy is an American tabloid news television show that ran in syndication from 1989 to 1999. Hard Copy was aggressive in its use of questionable material on television, including gratuitous violence....
on their March 5, 1991 episode.
Critical reception
The single release was largely panned by Allmusic, who described the two remixes included as inferior to the original. Since all three tracks were later released on the "Head Like a HoleHead Like a Hole
"Head Like a Hole" is a song by the American industrial rock project Nine Inch Nails. A song influenced by industrial metal group Ministry, it was released as the second single from the group's debut album Pretty Hate Machine...
" single, Allmusic labeled the "Down in It" single as "completely superfluous and useful only to NIN completists."
External links
- Nine Inch Nails' official site
- Down In It at the NinWiki
- Halo 1 at NINCollector.com
- "Down in It" (CD5") at DiscogsDiscogsDiscogs, short for discographies, is a website and database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are...
.com - "Down in It" (US 12") at DiscogsDiscogsDiscogs, short for discographies, is a website and database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are...
.com - "Down in It" (UK 12") at DiscogsDiscogsDiscogs, short for discographies, is a website and database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are...
.com - Hard Copy video clip at news.nin.net