Is it just me or has "The Downward Spiral" aged really badly?

It's just you.

It never was a "masterpiece". But it's good.

We all have music that hit us just right at a certain point in time, often in our teens. Revisiting that music years later can often be a disappointing experience.

It takes most of us a long time to learn to appreciate music just for the music, rather than as a soundtrack to our own lives. Once you realize the music's not about you, you can start enjoying it for reals.

Always thought Trent Reznor was a good composer, but he's always relied a bit too much on hipster technology and gimmicks to deliver the goods.

Last Noticer wrote:

Always thought Trent Reznor was a good composer, but he's always relied a bit too much on hipster technology and gimmicks to deliver the goods.

God I'm sick of the term "hipster".

Can we at least relegate the "hipster" label to stuff from THIS millennium?

You Are What You Is wrote:

It's just you.

It never was a "masterpiece". But it's good.

We all have music that hit us just right at a certain point in time, often in our teens. Revisiting that music years later can often be a disappointing experience.

It takes most of us a long time to learn to appreciate music just for the music, rather than as a soundtrack to our own lives. Once you realize the music's not about you, you can start enjoying it for reals.

You're right about me considering that music as a soundtrack to my life. But still, Downward Spiral is the only one of my favorites that is now unpalatable.

Pavement, Pixes, Ministry, Depeche Mode, The Jesus & Mary Chain, They Might Be Giants, Ween, Morrissey...EVEN FREAKING MORRISSEY still holds up!

But NIN, I just don't get it anymore.

That "Downward Spiral" will really hit you hard when you turn 60....man, does it go downhill fast after that....

This.I really liked Poison when I was a teenager, now I have to chuckle when I think about being a Poison fan!

You Are What You Is wrote:

We all have music that hit us just right at a certain point in time, often in our teens. Revisiting that music years later can often be a disappointing experience.

It takes most of us a long time to learn to appreciate music just for the music, rather than as a soundtrack to our own lives. Once you realize the music's not about you, you can start enjoying it for reals.

justthefacts wrote:

That "Downward Spiral" will really hit you hard when you turn 60....man, does it go downhill fast after that....

That will be weird when I'm 85 living in a nursing home and everyone is listening to the oldies from the 1990s

Now that I think about it, "Broken" still sounds pretty good.

Pretty Hate Machine still stands out to me.

Downward spirals greatest legacy is Hurt, which is amazing in its own right, but what Johnny Cash did with it is incredible.

So here is Johnny Cash doing "Hurt"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aF9AJm0RFc

His wife June Carter Cash is in the video. They both died the next year.

NIN - Hurt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI7LdCHgLgI

As you age you will realize that you will appreciate music on two levels. There is some really good music that holds up. Music that you can appreciate for the lyrics, the composure, the structure, the skill of the musicians etc..

Then there is music you simply enjoy due to nostalgia. It's not that you enjoy the music, you enjoy the memories that listening to that song conjures up.

Occasionally these two will merge, but it's a rarity.

what does that even mean? wrote:

Last Noticer wrote:

Always thought Trent Reznor was a good composer, but he's always relied a bit too much on hipster technology and gimmicks to deliver the goods.

God I'm sick of the term "hipster".

Can we at least relegate the "hipster" label to stuff from THIS millennium?

Aaaaaand here's the typical hipster defense for all things hipster.

What is a hipster to you? If a goth drug addict making industrial music in the '90s was a hipster, then I don't even know anymore, man.

How much longer can the "hipster" thing go on? When wearing black nerd glasses and big shaggy beards and waxed mustaches becomes played, then where do the hipsters go?

I wouldn't say that it has aged badly. I would say that time has not enhanced it at all. It is still the same thing now that it was twenty years ago. There is a lot of good talent at work on the album, and it does show. But in the end, it is just a bunch of angry white guy stuff that is a bit too produced and cold to offer much after sitting on the shelf for two decades. The Johnny Cash cover, on the other hand, will be just as powerful one hundred years later, if not more so.

Ghrelin wrote:

What is a hipster to you? If a goth drug addict making industrial music in the '90s was a hipster, then I don't even know anymore, man.

This is so SUPER hipster

Hmmm...not sure if I really want to bring this up but...

I actually like this remake better than the Cash remake.

People seem to connect Hipster with a particular style. That is not the case. The "look" of a hipster will continue to change over the course of decades.

Hipsters are people who are (or think they are) on to a particular way of life BEFORE the mainstream. So what most of you think of as Hipster is referred to as Twee. This is the beards, fixies, foodie, etc.

Before this, it was more Ramones-esque rock (think Strokes or Libertines) with tight jeans and leather. Prior to that, it was skaters, electronic/euro, grunge and before that it was post-punk preceded by punk. There have also been levels of jam-band or Patagonia-esque in there, but they never caught on as much as the others.

What we have seen with the Twee movement is the first Hipster generation to really go mainstream. This is probably due to the internet.

So Hipsters will be something else soon, and we might continue to call them hipsters or we might call them something else.

By that definition I suppose being a hipster is not always a bad thing. There would be good hipsters and bad hipsters over the decades.

But I think the term is also often just used in a very broad sense toward people that you don't understand or don't agree with.

This music hurts my brain..."HIPSTER".

What do you think of organic chemistry..."HIPSTER".

I disagree entirely with your analysis. Hipsters long for attention from mainstream culture. The other movements that you referenced in your post prided themselves on being separate from the mainstream culture and did not pander for a wider following.

Hipsters were NOT pre-dated by punk. There is nothing "punk" about hipsterism.

punks aren't buying $300 jeans and $600 granny boots.