Trent Reznor has shared that he teared up while listening to a Dua Lipa song, claiming it to be a “really well-done piece of music”.
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Appearing on Rick Rubin’s podcast, Tetragrammaton, the Nine Inch Nails frontman spoke about his struggles with songwriting, sharing: “To me, the hardest thing is the songwriting. Having something to say, something to say with truth, that has reason to exist rather than just a thing.”
He also spoke about his newfound appreciation for pop music, which he attributes to his children, explaining that he’d kept his kids sealed away from pop music because he had felt it “sucks generally”. It wasn’t until he heard his daughter singing a Dua Lipa song that he changed his mind.
“I heard my daughter, who’s six, singing Dua Lipa the other day,” he recounted. “She is so into it and it is so cool. Like this is her music, you know, this is her thing… It really reminded me of the art of writing a well-crafted song — I teared up listening to a Dua Lipa track. Because it was just a really well-done piece of music, you know? It was clever. It felt good.”
He added: “It’s a difficult thing to do. I don’t know how to do that. When I’m trying to think of what to say, I’m saying it from the unvarnished me. And that requires me thinking about who I am and where my position is now and all of that together becomes something that feels the stakes are higher.”
It is why Reznor prefers film scoring, having worked on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, Mank, The Social Network, Soul and Empire of Light, among others.
He explained: Sitting there and arranging stuff — I know what’s right… I don’t have to assess my thoughts on how I feel about a thing. What it comes down to is I really enjoy weirdly working in service to something. It’s like cracking a code. It feels good to crack the code, whatever it is.”
In other news, Reznor and bandmate Atticus Rose are set to provide the original score for the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, which was revealed by skateboarding legend Tony Hawk.
The collaborative duo — who also perform together as Nine Inch Nails — recently scored the Pixar movie Soul, making the upcoming Turtles project their second children’s film for the 2020s. The movie, titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, is set for release on August 3.