Recurring lyrics
Many of Trent Reznor's lyrics are thematically similar across songs and albums, evidence of both his genius and his lack of vocabulary. This is an expansion of a list compiled at ETS by user "Christ".
Contents
- 1 Afraid to see
- 2 A Million Miles Away
- 3 Becoming
- 4 Beginnings
- 5 Belonging
- 6 Bleeding
- 7 Blind
- 8 Blurring lines
- 9 Bowing down
- 10 Broken
- 11 Burning
- 12 Calling
- 13 Cracks
- 14 Crawling
- 15 Decay
- 16 Deserving
- 17 Disappearing; abandonment; loss; throw away
- 18 Disease
- 19 Dragging/pulling/pushing
- 20 Dreams
- 21 Drowning
- 22 Exit
- 23 Eye
- 24 Fading
- 25 Flesh
- 26 Get me out of here
- 27 God
- 28 Head
- 29 Hiding
- 30 Holes
- 31 How it feels
- 32 I can still feel you
- 33 Insects
- 34 It keeps coming
- 35 Knees (down on or getting up off)
- 36 Machines
- 37 Memory
- 38 Nothing can stop me now
- 39 Pigs
- 40 Profanity
- 41 Realization
- 42 The Sea
- 43 Sin
- 44 Slipping
- 45 Skin
- 46 Solipsism
- 47 Stopping
- 48 Tiny little dot
- 49 That which could have or would have been
- 50 Underneath it all
- 51 Virus
- 52 Waking up
Afraid to see
- Heresy: "he sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see"
- Capital G: "there's a lot of me inside you, maybe you're afraid to see"
A Million Miles Away
- Hurt: "If i could start again, a million miles away. I would keep myself, I would find a way"
- All The Love In The World: "I've become a million miles aw(ay)
Becoming
- Now I'm Nothing: "oh, what I have become!"
- Gave Up: "after everything I've done I hate myself for what I've become"
- Fist Fuck: "can you let your heart become central pump-house for all human feelings?"
- Closer: "help me become somebody else"
- The Becoming: "I am becoming"
- Hurt: "what have I become, my sweetest friend?"
- We're In This Together: "I've become impossible"
- Even Deeper: "do you know how far this has gone? just how damaged have I become"
- The Great Below: "the destiny I've chose / all becoming clear"
- Where Is Everybody?:
- "that hasn't yet become"
- "come on there has got to be someone / hasn't yet become / so numb / and succumb"
- The New Flesh: "yes I am becoming" and "I've become"
- Me, I'm Not: "and it's hard to believe / just, what I've become"
- All the Love In the World: "I've become a million miles aw(ay)"
Beginnings
- The New Flesh: "and this is how it all begins"
- The Wretched: "back at the beginning"
- Please: "this is how it begins"
- And All That Could Have Been: "ending what had begun"
- The Beginning of the End
Belonging
- Starfuckers, Inc.: "now I belong / I'm one of the chosen ones"
- All The Love In The World: "watching all the insects march along / seem to know just right where they belong"
- You Know What You Are?: "go on get back to where you belong"
- With Teeth: "you've finally found the place where you belong"
- Beside You In Time: "everything is back where it belongs"
- Right Where It Belongs: "see the safety of the life you have built / everything where it belongs"
- Home: "I return to the only place I've ever felt that I belong"
Bleeding
- Ringfinger: "working my hands until they bleed"
- I Do Not Want This: "and nothing comes bleeding out of me just like a waterfall I'm drowning in"
- Reptile: "angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress"
- Where Is Everybody?: "pleading and needing and bleeding and breeding"
- The Hand That Feeds: "will you chew until it bleeds?"
- Survivalism: "all bruised and broken, bleeding / she asked to take my hand"
- My Violent Heart: our blood will stay…our blood / our ways
Bleeding through
- Bleedthrough was the working title for With Teeth
- Every Day Is Exactly The Same: "a little bit comes bleeding through"
- Beside You In Time: "feel the little pieces bleeding through"
Blind
- Heresy (Blind)
- Happiness In Slavery: "the blind have been blessed with security"
- Suck: "once I could see now I am blind"
- Ruiner: "those that you keep blind will suddenly realize"
Blurring lines
- The Line Begins To Blur
- With Teeth: "the lines begin to blur"
Bowing down
- Head Like a Hole:"Bow down before the one you serve"
- Meet Your Master:"Bow down in position"
Broken
- Broken
- Gave Up: "still cannot fix this broken machine"
- Happiness In Slavery: "just some flesh caught in this big broken machine"
- Piggy: "black and blue and broken bones / you left me here I'm all alone"
- The Becoming: "he's covered with scabs, he is broken and sore"
- Hurt: "full of broken thoughts, I cannot repair"
- Somewhat Damaged: "broken bruised forgotten sore / too fucked up to care anymore"
- No, You Don't: "broken down see through soul"
- Survivalism: "all bruised and broken, bleeding / she asked to take my hand"
Bruised
- Head Like A Hole: "God Money let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised"
- Somewhat Damaged: "broken bruised forgotten sore / too fucked up to care anymore"
- Survivalism: "all bruised and broken, bleeding / she asked to take my hand"
Burning
- Burn
- Heresy: "burning with your god"
- The Big Come Down: "there is a hate that burns within"
- Non-Entity: "Burning down the world, the ashes and debris"
- Sunspots: "peel off our skin we're gonna burn what we were to the ground"
Fire
- Sanctified: "as the words spill out like fire from her lips"
- Gave Up: "wake up in flames"
- Fist Fuck: "can you flow with fire"
- Survivalism: "you see your world on fire"
- In This Twilight: "it is watching us, and the world we set on fire / do you wonder, if it feels the same?"
- My Violent Heart: "Into fire you can send us / From the fire we return"
- Sunspots: "fuck in the fire and we'll spread all the ashes around"
Calling
- Dead Souls: "They keep calling me"
- Even Deeper: "I hear them call I cannot stay the voice inviting me away"
- Sunspots: "I hear it calling and I come cause I can’t disobey"
Cracks
- You Know What You Are?: "I tried to patch up the cracks and the holes that I have to hide"
- Getting Smaller: "can kind of see out the cracks when I press up to the wall"
- Right Where It Belongs: "what if you could look right through the cracks?"
- Not So Pretty Now: "the cracks begin to show"
Crawling
- Down In It: " I was swimming in the haze now I crawl on the ground"
- Getting Smaller: "I'd be happy to crawl"
- March Of The Pigs: "Crawl right up on your knees"
- My Violent Heart: "On hands and knees, we crawl"
- The Beginning Of The End: "Down on your knees"
- The Way Out Is Through: "But still we crawl"
- In This Twilight: "as it crawls across a final time"
Decay
- Terrible Lie: "my morals left to decay"
- The Becoming: "the blood has stopped pumping and he's left to decay"
- Somewhat Damaged: "drink the fountain of decay"
- The Day The World Went Away: "but in his voice I heard decay"
- Ripe (With Decay)
Rotting
- Last: "dress up this rotten carcass"
- Somewhat Damaged: "poisoned to my rotten core"
Deserving
- Head Like A Hole:"You’re going to get what you deserve"
- Meet Your Master:"Maybe you get what you deserve"
Disappearing; abandonment; loss; throw away
- Throw This Away
- Head Like A Hole: "no you can't take that away from me"
- Terrible Lie:
- "don't take it away from me"
- "I'm all alone in a world you must despise"
- "my morals left to decay"
- That's What I Get: "you took away all my self confidence"
- Something I Can Never Have: "you make this all go away"
- Ringfinger: "you just leave me nailed here"
- Suck: "all that was true is left behind"
- Gave Up: "give it to me I throw it away"
- Wish: "I just threw it away"
- Last: "I pissed it all away"
- Piggy: "you left me here I'm all alone"
- Hurt: "the feelings disappear" and "everyone I know goes away in the end"
- Closer: "help me get away from myself"
- The Becoming:
- "even when I'm right with you I'm so far away"
- "and he's left to decay"
- "all pain disappears"
- Reptile: "she leaves a trail of honey to show me where she's been"
- Eraser: "find you" and "lose me"
- I Do Not Want This: "if I could just reach you maybe I could leave this place"
- Dead Souls: "someone take these dreams away"
- Deep: "right here make it all disappear"
- We’re In This Together:
- "well they've got to make it go away / well they've got to make it disappear"
- "as lost as I get I will find you"
- The Great Below:
- "washes me away makes me disappear"
- "I can still feel you even so far away"
- Please:
- "I can disappear"
- "push it away but it all comes back again"
- "but it just left me dead"
- "you can never leave me"
- The Day The World Went Away: "all the insides left cold and gray"
- Somewhat Damaged:
- "made the choice to go away"
- "in the back / off the side / far away"
- "all alone / by myself / where were you?"
- The Big Come Down: "find a place with the failed and forgotten"
- The Fragile: "I can't watch her slip away"
- Where Is Everybody?: "everything pushes me further away"
- And All That Could Have Been:
- "maybe I'll disappear"
- "you won't find me here"
- "take this and run far away"
- "left with a trace of all that was"
- Beside You In Time: "I am all alone this time around"
- Only: "yes, I am alone / but then again I always was"
- Right Where It Belongs: "and you really are alone"
- All The Love In The World: "hiding in the crowd I’m all alone…sometimes I get so lonely I could –"
- "all the jagged edges disappear / colors all look brighter when you’re near"
- The Line Begins To Blur: "the more I disappear
- My Violent Heart: "we will not go away"
- In This Twilight: "let me take away your doubt"
Disease
- Terrible Lie: "my head is filled with disease"
- Suck: "this disease I give to myself"
- Reptile: "my disease my infection"
- Ruiner: "wearing your disease"
Dragging/pulling/pushing
- Down In It: "it was pulling me down"
- Mr. Self Destruct: "I drag you down I use you up"
- March Of The Pigs: "step right up / march / push"
- The Perfect Drug: "pull the stars from the sky" and "dragging shaking me"
- The Wretched: "just to push you down"
- Please: "push it away but it all comes back again"
- Where Is Everybody?: "everything pushes me further away"
- We’re In This Together: "they pick and they pull"
- The Great Below: "ocean pulls me close"
Dreams
- Sanctified: "I still dream of lips I never should have kissed"
- Something I Can Never Have: "my favorite dreams of you still wash ashore"
- Terrible Lie: "seems like salvation comes only in our dreams"
- Suck: "don't want your dreams you try to sell"
- Gave Up: "perfect little dream"
- Mr. Self Destruct: "I am the end of all your dreams"
- Heresy: "he dreamed a god up"
- The Becoming: "I'm stuck in this dream"
- Eraser: "dream you"
- Even Deeper: "in a dream I'm a different me"
- Dead Souls: "someone take these dreams away"
Drowning
- The Only Time: "and swim in it until I drown"
- Last: "new sweat to drown me in"
- Fist Fuck: "help I'm drowning"
- The Becoming: "drowns out all I hear"
- Heresy: "drowning in his own hypocrisy"
- I Do Not Want This: "just like a waterfall I'm drowning in"
- Please: "sink until I drown"
- The Great Below: "the currents have their say"
Exit
- Mr. Self Destruct: "I am an exit"
- The New Flesh: "This is not an exit"
Eye
- Down In It: "just then a tiny little dot caught my eye" and "but the needle's already in my eye"
- Ringfinger: "wrap my eyes in bandages"
- The Only Time: "the sweat in your eyes"
- Kinda I Want To: "maybe god will cover up his eyes"
- Last: "look through these blackened eyes"
- Happiness In Slavery: "don't open your eyes"
- Heresy: "he sewed his eyes shut"
- Only: "well the tiniest little dot caught my eye"
- The Great Below: "all the world has closed her eyes"
- The New Flesh: "the blackest eyes"
- Memorabilia: "the look in your eye"
- The Beginning of the End: "I got my mark / see it in my eyes"
- Non-Entity: "The echoes in my eyes/Of all they used to see"
- Sunspots: "Sunspots cast a glare in my eyes"
Fading
- Down In It: "what I used to think was me is just a fading memory"
- Something I Can Never Have: "just a fading fucking reminder of who I used to be"
- And All That Could Have Been: "tracks will fade in the snow" and "gone, fading, everything"
- Non-Entity: "now I'm afraid I'm fading out of sight"
- Only: "I'm becoming less defined, as days go by / fading away, well..."
- Getting Smaller: "I'm afraid I am starting to fade away"
- Beside You In Time: "I can feel me start to fade away"
- Not So Pretty Now: But your just fading, and fading, and fading, and fading the fuck away"
Flesh
- The New Flesh
- Complications Of The Flesh
- Terrible Lie: "my skin is begging you"
- Sin: "it gets under my skin"
- Ringfinger: "sever flesh and bone"
- Suck: "the temple walls are made of flesh"
- Happiness In Slavery: "just some flesh caught"
Get me out of here
- Fist Fuck
- Deep
God
- 10 Miles High: "I swore to God I'd never turn into you"
- Closer: "You get me closer to God"
- Head Like A Hole: "God Money I'll do anything for you"
- Heresy: "God is dead"
- Home: "God knows how much i've tried to"
- Maybe Just Once: "Oh God, what's coming to me?"
- Right Where it Belongs: "Your devils and your gods, all the living and the dead"
- Ringfinger: "You left me nailed hanging like Jesus on this cross"
- Suck: "There is no God up in the sky tonight"
- Terrible Lie: "Hey God!"
- The Wretched: "and God himself will reach his fucking arm through"
- The Beginning of the End: "God helps the ones who can help themselves"
- God Given
- Starfuckers inc.: "My god sits in the back of the limousine/My god comes in a wrapper of cellophane/My god pouts on the cover of the magazine/My god’s a shallow little bitch trying to make the scene"
Head
- Head Like A Hole
- Terrible Lie: "my head is filled with disease"
- Something I Can Never Have: "scraping through my head"
- Kinda I Want To: "I can't shake this feeling from my head"
- Happiness In Slavery: "I bow my head to confess"
- Last: "my head got lost along the way"
- Big Man With A Gun: "maybe I'll put a hole in your head"
- The Becoming: "goddamn this noise inside my head"
- Mr. Self Destruct: "I am the voice inside your head"
- The Downward Spiral: "spilling out of my head"
- I Do Not Want This: "I have lived so many lives all in my head"
- The Perfect Drug: "I got my head but my head is unraveling"
- Somewhat Damaged: "then my head fell apart"
- Into The Void: "pictures in my head of the final destination"
- Please: "the world is over and I realize it was all in my head"
- The New Flesh: "and in my head this is how it all begins"
- And All That Could Have Been: "I am locked in my head"
- Get Down, Make Love: "you blow my head"
- All The Love In The World: "they don’t sound as good outside my head"
- Getting Smaller: "got my head on a spring"
- Right Where It Belongs: "what if all the world’s inside of your head"
Hiding
- Terrible Lie: "there's nothing left for me to hide"
- Mr. Self Destruct: "I am the hate you try to hide"
- The Becoming: "hiding backwards inside of me"
- The Big Come Down: "there is no way I can hide"
- Where Is Everybody?: "when all I'm really doing is trying to hide"
- Somewhat Damaged: "is a place where I hide where I stay"
- No, You Don’t: "tries so hard to hide"
- The Fragile: "where we can run and hide"
- All The Love In The World: "hiding in the crowd I’m all alone"
- You Know What You Are: "I have to patch up the cracks and the holes that I have to hide"
- Love Is Not Enough: "well, it hides in the dark"
- Every Day Is Exactly The Same: "well, I’ll hide it behind something"
- Right Where It Belongs: "are you hiding in the trees?"
- Me, I’m Not: "I define myself / by how well I hide"
Holes
- Head Like A Hole
- Down In It: "now just this hole that's open wide"
- Gave Up: "watching the hole it used to be mine"
- Wish: "I'm the one with this big fucking hole"
- The Downward Spiral: "so much blood for such a tiny little hole"
- Hurt: "the needle tears a hole"
- Big Man With A Gun: "maybe I'll put a hole in your head"
- Deep: "there's a big black hole gonna eat me up someday"
- The Wretched: "stuck in this hole with the shit and the piss"
- Somewhat Damaged: "tear a hole exquisite red"
- No, You Don’t: "smiling in their faces while filling up the hole"
- Please: "it fills up the hole but it grows somewhere else instead"
- You Know What You Are: "I have to patch up the cracks and the holes that I have to hide"
- My Violent Heart: "there's bullet-holes where my compassion used to be"
How it feels
- Suck: "how does it feel"
- Gave Up: "forgot how it feels well almost"
- Fist Fuck: "oh you just wish I could feel that way too"
- I Do Not Want This: "to those who know what it really feels like"
- Memorabilia: "I know what it feels like"
- The Wretched: "now you know this is what it feels"
- The Hand That Feeds: "and you feel just fine"
- Every Day Is Exactly The Same: "I can feel their eyes are watching"
- Only: "and I had this funny feeling"
- Getting Smaller: "don’t know what to feel"
- Sunspots: "I feel it coming / I have to apologise for the way I feel"
- Beside You In Time: "feel the little pieces bleeding through / I can feel me start to fade away"
- Right Where It Belongs: "feel the hollowness inside of your heart"
- Home: "and it feels / I’m getting to the end"
- Me, I’m Not: "I feel it coming apart"
- In This Twilight: "and it feels like, like it was a friend / do you wonder if it feels the same? / what it feels like, and I won't feel again / and the longing that you feel"
I can still feel you
- The Great Below: "I can still feel you / even so far away"
- Underneath It All: "all I do / I can still feel you"
Insects
- All The Love In The World: "Watching all the insects march along"
- Reptile: "She spreads herself wide open to let the insects in"
It keeps coming
- The Wretched: "you can try to stop it but it keeps on coming"
- The Big Come Down: "it feels like it keeps coming from the inside"
- Please: "and it keeps repeating"
- Dead Souls: "they keep calling me"
- The Hand That Feeds: "I keep holding on to what I want to believe"
- With Teeth: "keeps holding on"
- Right Where It Belongs: "You keep looking but you can’t find the woods"
- Survivalism: "I turned just keep on walking"
Knees (down on or getting up off)
- The Hand That Feeds: "will you get up off your knees"
- The Beginning of the End: "down on your knees / you’ll be left behind"
- My Violent Heart: "On hands and knees
- March Of The Pigs: "Crawl right up on your knees"
- Terrible Lie: "i'm on my hands and knees"
- Capital G: "well i used to stand for something/now i'm on my hands and knees"
Machines
- Pretty Hate Machine
- Gave Up: "still cannot fix this broken machine"
- Happiness In Slavery: "just some flesh caught in this big broken machine"
- Mr. Self Destruct: "I am the silencing machine"
- The Becoming: "I beat my machine"
- Somewhat Damaged: "this machine is obsolete"
Memory
- Down In It: "just a fading memory"
- Hurt: "but I remember everything"
- Memorabilia: "I have got to have a memory / I can't remember / give me your reminder"
- I'm Looking Forward To Joining You, Finally: "I remember sometimes"
- You Know What You Are: "remember where you came from / remember what you are"
- Love Is Not Enough: "I can’t remember what it is / in your eyes is a place worth remembering"
- Every Day Is Exactly The Same: "I can’t remember how this got started"
Nothing can stop me now
- Piggy and Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)
- Ruiner and Ruiner (Version)
- Big Man With A Gun
- La Mer and La Mer (Version) ("nothing can stop me now" spoken in creole french)
- Sunspots
Pigs
- Piggy
- March Of The Pigs
- Last: "pigs we get what pigs deserve"
- Heresy: "he made a virus that would kill off all the swine"
- God Given: "we are the divine, separated from the swine"
- During Fragility, Trent chanted "pig" before Reptile. This can be heard on the And All That Could Have Been DVD extra performance of Reptile.
- Le Pig studio
Profanity
Fuck –
- Something I Can Never Have: just a fading fucking reminder of who I used to be
- The Only Time: while the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car
- Wish: now there’s nothing more fucked up I could do / big time, hard line, bad luck, fist fuck / I’m the one with this big fucking hole
- March of the Pigs: I want to fuck it up
- Closer: I wanna fuck you like an animal
- The Ruiner: the only pure thing left in my fucking world is wearing your disease / and maybe that fucked me up much more than you’ll ever know
- I Do Not Want This: I want to fuck everyone in the world
- Big Man With A Gun: just for the fuck of it / I’m hard as fucking steel / me and my fucking gun
- Eraser: fuck you
- The Downward Spiral: a lifetime of fucking things up fixed in one determined flash
- Somewhat Damaged: fuck the rest and stab it dead / too fucked up to care anymore / where the fuck were you?
- The Wretched: and God himself will reach his fucking arm through
- Starfuckers Inc.: I am every fucking thing and just a little more
- The Big Come Down: smash it apart just for the fuck of it
- You Know What You Are: don’t you fucking know what you are
- Love Is Not Enough: I’ve gone all this fucking away
- Only: there is no fucking you
- Getting Smaller: I haven’t got fucking anything
- Sunspots: fuck in the fire and we’ll spread all the ashes around
- Capital G: Those motherfuckers didn't last too long
Shit -
- Piggy: lost my shit because of you
- The Ruiner: serving his shit to the flies
- Hurt: I wear this crown of shit
- The Wretched: stuck in this hole with the shit and the piss
- Where Is Everybody: though I really didn’t give a shit
- Capital G: Don't give a shit about the temperature in Guatemala
- The Great Destroyer: Turn it up, listen to the shit they pump
- You Know What You Are: you better take a good look cause I’m full of shit
Realization
- Sin: "am I just too stupid to realize"
- Gave Up: "it took you to make me realize"
- Eraser (Denial; Realization)
- The Perfect Drug (song)|The Perfect Drug: "my soul is so afraid to realize"
- Please: "and I realize it was all in my head"
- Burn: "why did you put it there/did you not realize"
The Sea
- Ringfinger: "deeper than the sea"
- La Mer: ("La Mer" is translated from French to literally "The Sea")
- The Great Below: "staring at the sea"
- With Teeth (song): "the blackest sea"
Sin
- Sin
- Ringfinger: "I'm just dying for your sins"
- Please: "all the flesh / all the sin"
Slipping
- That’s What I Get: "slipping on the tears"
- Deep: "you're slipping through"
Slipping away
- Slipping Away
- Last: "still feel it all slipping away"
- The Becoming: "I might just slip away"
- Into The Void: "but myself keeps slipping away"
- The Fragile: "I can't watch her slip away"
Skin
- sin: "it gets under my skin"
- Down In It (Skin)
- Last: "fresh blood through tired skin"
- Happiness In Slavery: "itches my skin right off my back"
- Happiness In Slavery: "just words and so much skin"
- Underneath The Skin
- March Of The Pigs: "take the skin and peel it back"
- Reptile: "just underneath her skin"
- I Do Not Want This: "bamboo puncturing this skin"
- Somewhat Damaged: "shedding skin succumb defeat"
- We're In This Together: "as they peel apart the skin"
- Please: "all the flesh all the sin"
- I'm Looking Forward To Joining You, Finally: "his skin just wasn't thick enough"
- Deep: "your skin speaks up but your lips couldn't say it"
- My Violent Heart: "our bones, our skin"
- Vessel: "I let it get under my skin"
Solipsism
- I Do Not Want This: "I have lived so many lives all in my head"
- Please: "the world is over and I realize it was all in my head"
- Only: "you were never real to begin with / i just made you up..." and "there is no you / there is only me"
- Right Where It Belongs: "what if all the world you think you know is an elaborate dream?"
Stopping
- We’re In This Together: "none of them can stop us now"
- Sunspots: "but I can't stop what has begun"
- The Line Begins To Blur: "isn’t anyone stopping me?"
- My Violent Heart: "You cannot stop us all"
- Me, I’m Not: "hey, can we stop?"
Tiny little dot
- Down In It:
- Just then a tiny little dot caught my eye it was just about too small to see
- But I watched it way too long and that dot was pulling me down
- Only:
- Well the tiniest little dot caught my eye
- And it turned out to be a scab
- And I had this funny feeling
- Like I just knew it's something bad
That which could have or would have been
- The Wretched: "all the what abouts, and all the might have could have beens"
- The Great Below: "for all we could have done, and all that could have been"
- And All That Could Have Been
- Every Day Is Exactly The Same: "I wish this could have been any other way"
- La Mer: "I think I could have been someone"
- Sunspots: "I think I could have been someone / but I can’t stop what has begun"
Underneath it all
- The Way Out Is Through: underneath it all / we feel so small
- Underneath It All: hear your call / underneath it all
Virus
- Heresy: he made a virus to kill off all the swine
- The Warning: you’ve become a virus / that has eaten up its host
Waking up
- Even Deeper: "I woke up today to find myself in the other place"
- Gave Up: "wake up / wake up in flames"
- We’re In This Together: "awake to the sound"
- Home: "I awake to find I’m not at all where I should be"