NIN Oeuvre Blog: Every Day Is Exactly The Same

Editor’s Note: This entry originally appeared on the blog Ten Thousand Lies on June 8, 2007.

i believe i can see the future
because i repeat the same routine
i think i used to have a purpose
and then again that might have been a dream

“Every Day Is Exactly The Same” was the #1 song on the Billboard Modern Rock chart on the day that my daughter was born. When Kaylee asks what the #1 song was on the day she was born, which is bound to happen in our family, where discussions of such minutiae are commonplace, I will certainly not tell her that it was Ne-Yo’s “So Sick” (#1 on the Hot 100 that day), or James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful” (#1 on the Top 40). No, I will definitely say that it was Nine Inch Nails. But talking about this song is always kind of awkward, because it’s a song that, from my perspective, is all about how meaningless life becomes when you settle down, or when you settle period (into a job, into a routine, et cetera). So I’ll tell her, and then I’ll ask her to pass the brocolli, hoping that we can not talk about what the song meant to me.

I’ve told many friends that With Teeth is not an album meant for the married with children subset of the NIN fanbase. Between “EDIETS” and “Right Where It Belongs” alone there is enough fodder to get the sad, insecure brain thinking very dark thoughts. And my brain is often sad, and almost always insecure.

i can feel their eyes are watching
in case i lose myself again
sometimes i think i’m happy here
sometimes i still pretend
i can’t remember how this all got started
but i can tell you - exactly - how it will end

Listen: It’s hard to listen to With Teeth all of the way through for a number of reasons. The most prominent of these is that it is an album of single songs, and not the kind of concept album (The Downward Spiral) or pseudo-concept album (The Fragile) that we’d become used to prior to its release. There are groups of two or three songs here and there which can be listened to back-to-back, but there’s always a filler song there to interrupt the flow ("The Collector” and “Sunspots” are the tracks that come immediately to mind). But the biggest reason that it’s hard for me to listen to it is because it seems to be suggesting to me that I am no longer meant to be listening to this, that I am too old, that I am too normal, that I have become the man, as it were, by becoming a husband and a parent, and that, therefore, I cannot understand (maybe the Fresh Prince was right about that one).

And that hurts, because this is my favorite band bar-none. And the idea that I am no longer fit to be part of the audience… that’s too much to bear.