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The Perfect Drug (song) (view source)
Revision as of 03:42, 20 September 2018
, 03:42, 20 September 2018→Live
| title =The Perfect Drug
| album =''[[Lost Highway Soundtrack]]''
| length =5:4215
| BPM = 149
| versions =The Perfect Drug<br>The Perfect Drug (Edit)<br>The Perfect Drug (''We're In This Together'' version)<br>The Perfect Drug (Instrumental)<br>The Perfect Drug ([[Meat Beat Manifesto]])<br>The Perfect Drug (Plug)<br>The Perfect Drug ([[Nine Inch Nails]])<br>The Perfect Drug (Spacetime Continuum)<br>The Perfect Drug (The Orb)<br>The Perfect Drug (Aphrodite)
| live = [[NIN songs never played live|UnperformedCold And Black And Infinite Tour]]
}}'''"The Perfect Drug"''' was written and recorded for the ''[[Lost Highway Soundtrack]]'' in 1996.
==Live==
"The Perfect Drug" was not played live until [[NIN songs never played live2018/09/18_Morrison,_CO|has never been played liveSeptember 18, 2018]] despite its popularity with many NIN fansat Red Rocks, Colorado, though it was attempted during rehearsals for a few previous tours. It was widely speculated that the complex drum solo in the song is was responsible for this, although it was probably not out of the range of drummers [[Josh Freese]] or [[Ilan Rubin]]. It is also likely that Reznor does not personally like the song very much, as he concedes that it was produced quickly for the ''Lost Highway'' soundtrack.
<blockquote>"The one question I asked him was about playing The Perfect Drug live, and how the rehearsal process went for that song and why it never worked out. The first thing he said, without hesitation was that the song itself isn't that difficult to play live on the drums. He said something about the programmed beats part was the only thing that was sort of complicated (it was a little hard to hear him at times, crappy connection), but that it worked live with him playing it. The drumming sounded good and everyone was happy with that. He said the problem with the song was the ending. The whole song was really rocking and pushing through, then you get to the ending and it just never seemed to work. He said they tried four or so different endings to the song. They tried it kinda mellow sounding, and that didn't work. They tried a really aggressive ending, and that didn't work either. They did a simple ending, same result. They just couldn't find an ending to the sound that seemed to do it justice. The thing was that the song sounded really good, but to get to the ending and just not sound good, it was kind of a let down. He said [Trent Reznor] just seemed uninterested with it after a while and they just gave up on it."</blockquote>
Fellow NIN fan Whiskers had previously asked the same when he had lunch with the drummer. [http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?30,234801,665605#msg-665605 link]
Reznor answered a question about playing "The Perfect Drug" live directly during a 2017 Q&A in Chicago. He said:
<blockquote>"We've tried it. The unsexy answer is it just doesn't sound that good live. And it's hard to sing, and it ends up making me angry, so we don't do it."</blockquote>
==Music Video==
[[Image:TPDstill.jpg|thumb|Screenshot from the "The Perfect Drug" video]]
[[Mark Romanek]], who also directed "[[Closer]]," directed the [[Nine Inch Nails music videos|music video]] for "The Perfect Drug" in 1997. It was one of the most expensive videos at the time, costing over $850,000 to make. Building the two main sets (a refrigerated set and a rooftop set) and commissioning the giant hand sculpture were some of the larger expenses.[http://www.nin-pages.de/perfect_drug_video_quelle.htm]
The concept of the video is widely interpreted as Trent Reznor portraying a man mourning the death of a child and detaching himself from reality through absinthe. [[Charlie Clouser]], [[Danny Lohner]], and [[Chris Vrenna]] appear in the video, most notably playing string instruments at the beginning of the video. The aesthetics were heavily influenced by the illustrations of 20th-century artist Edward Gorey (1925–2000), the most obvious reference coming from the boy sitting on the cushion in front of the painting.
[[Category: NIN Songs]][[Category: NIN Songs Never Played Live]][[Category:Music Videos]][[Category:Rare NIN Songs]]