Changes

}}'''"The Only Time"''' is the ninth track on the 1989 release ''[[Pretty Hate Machine]].''  The song references "[[Down In It's a rather dancable track about new experiences and indulging (song)|Down In It]]" in its use of the dirty side of lifesame recognizable melodic synth voice.

*Engineering: John Fryer, Keith LeBlanc, [[Kennan Keating]], [[Ken Quartarone]]

This is the final album version.The track begins with Reznor's vocal and a bass line that sounds like a keyboard slap bass preset. As the verse moves along, a minimal and sleek-sounding drum track gradually comes in. Near the end of the first verse, there is a very brief appearance of [[samples|sampled]] background vocals recorded for "So Alive" by Love And Rockets (a track also produced by John Fryer.) As the chorus kicks in, the bass switches to a more picked bass guitar sound, the drum track becomes much louder and more aggressive and the low-pitched "Down In It" synth voice comes in, playing an ascending melody. During the second half of the chorus, the instrumentation of the verse returns, and the high-pitched "Down In It" synth voice comes in. The song continues on in much the same pattern, with minor variances. A distorted guitar overdub in the instrumental end of the song segues directly into "[[Ringfinger]]."

An early version of the song found on [[''Purest Feeling (halo)|Purest Feeling]]''.

This live version begins with Reznor explaining that "this is a song about fucking."This version features a heavy guitar riff added during the second verse, as well as an aggressive bridge section with more heavy guitar and a descending synth melody.

Last performed during the [[Self-Destruct Tour]]with new guitar riffs, the song has pushed its way back to the surfacein brief, the its melody being used for an interpolation/breakdown during the final verse of "[[Closer]]" on the [[Live: With Teeth]] tour and continuing to this day. It is unclear if it will be played live again, though.