Board 8 > Rank the Tracks Week 27: Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine (+ Jimi results)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Previous results can be seen here:
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Rank_the_Tracks

The rules:
1. Listen to the album in full
2. Rank every track on the album
3. For the results, there will be a curve at the top of each list; two additional points between #1 and #2, and one additional point for the next two ranks. This way, the songs that really stick out to someone get an edge that is not immediately negated by someone else putting it lower. In the case of Demon Days, someone's 15th track will get 1 point, 14th 2 points, 4th 12 points, 3rd 14 points, 2nd 16 points, and 1st 19 points
4. If you want to include comments for individual songs, I will compile them in the results
5. The results will be posted at the beginning of the next topic
6. The deadline to vote is Sunday, September 12 at 8:00 AM EST - though if you are for whatever reason listening to the album around that time, just say so in the topic and I can delay a bit
7. You can sign up to be added to a user cycle for after we finish the queue; once we get through the last planned album, the next person on the list will choose 3 albums which the other users will vote on for the next topic.
7a. To ensure people are being given an actual choice, the three nominated albums must be by different artists. You can otherwise stick to a similar sound or era.
7b. The tiebreaker for these polls will be whichever is listed first in the poll options - make sure to deliver the results in order of your own preference (which will hopefully have the added benefit of influencing people toward your first choice if they can't decide).
7c. The order of the user cycle will be randomly determined, but users will first be sorted into tiers by how many of their nominations have been covered during the early nominations period.

Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine track list:
1. Head Like a Hole
2. Terrible Lie
3. Down in It
4. Sanctified
5. Something I Can Never Have
6. Kinda I Want To
7. Sin
8. That's What I Get
9. The Only Time
10. Ringfinger

Schedule:
9/12: The Knife - Silent Shout (CasanovaZelos)
9/19: Billy Joel - The Stranger (Seanchan)
9/26: Spice Girls - Spice (SpikeSetsFire)
10/3: Iron Maiden - Powerslave (TheArkOfTurus)
10/10: Rancid - ...And Out Come the Wolves (Snake5555555555)
10/17: OutKast - Aquemini (Giggsalot)
10/24: Of Monsters and Men - My Head Is an Animal (Jesse_Custer)
10/31: Taylor Swift - Speak Now (Snake5555555555)
11/7: The Avalanches - Since I Left You (SpikeSetsFire)
11/14: Moby - Play (SpikeSetsFire)
11/21: Steely Dan - Can't Buy a Thrill (Seginustemple)

User Cycle sign-ups:
11/28: MetalmindStats
12/5: TheArkOfTurus
12/12: Snake5555555555
12/19: Jesse_Custer
12/26: ZaziGuado
1/2: SpikeSetsFire
1/9: Johnbobb
1/16: VeryInsane
1/23: CasanovaZelos
1/30: Seanchan
2/6: Giggsalot
2/13: RyoCaliente
2/20: darkx
2/27: neonreaper
3/6: Great_Paul
3/13: jcgamer107

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The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Are You Experienced Results

The participants sorted by deviation from final results:
Johnbobb (44)
CasanovaZelos (50)
Seanchan (56)
Raetsel_Lapin (72)
RyoCaliente (72)
HBJDubs (74)
NFUN (84)

General Album Comments

Seanchan: First listen and I'm a little conflicted. I've heard at least a third of these songs before but I've never had any real desire to seek them out. An hour of this and I was a little fatigued of it..

CasanovaZelos: I haven't relistened yet but historically agree with the fatigue - this would probably be a better listen at the original 11-song length, if only there weren't two versions. A few major acts had separate US and UK releases in this time period, but at least with bands like The Beatles, we tend to just go with the UK version now. Mashing them together gives us more Hendrix, which I guess is good for fans, but it doesn't really feel like a cohesive album.

ChainLTTP: Jimi Hendrix is a weird artist because he was so romanticized by the Boomers / Rolling Stone critics that he became wildly overrated. Then that feeling kind of corrected itself in the last decade or so to the point where he's kind of underrated now.

In either case, this album is pretty bloated.

VeryInsane: I know we all talk about Hendrix himself but Mitchell is an excellent drummer, just wanted to put that out there

NFUN: Purple Haze was something I loved as a kid, but now I find I like his more progressive and meandering tracks more. It (unsurprisingly) seems to play to his strengths a lot better. I haven't heard most of these songs in a decade (and this album has apparently nearly everything I know from him). I still have vivid memories of listening to the title track while exploring Blackreach in Skyrim. Solid album with no duds, though I thought Hey Joe was kind of repetitive and boring

Seanchan: Overall I didn't really enjoy this album very much. There's nothing here that's bad necessarily, it just felt overly long and a bit of a slog to listen to. Now granted part of that comes down to the circumstances under which I'm trying to listen...but if this had grabbed me I would have found the time to dedicate. That I didn't is pretty telling for my personal regard of this album.

Raetsel_Lapin: In a rare twist, I find myself agreeing with the general consensus on this album and kinda wish we'd done the shorter US version of the album than this almost arbitrarily extended version. Almost all enthusiasm I had for the album drained when I got to the title track (which was a natural stopping point) and saw just how much longer it was going to go. Like, this isn't a long album, but it definitely feels like it keeps going far longer than it had any reason to.

On the other hand, my personal favorite song from this album is one of the random extras, so I can't complain too much and I'd say I generally liked the music. It was worth the listen.

Johnbobb: This album fully deserves all the acclaim it gets. I'm of the not-controversial opinion that Jimi Hendrix is hands down one of the greatest musicians to ever live. Vocals, songwriting and guitar skill are all top tier and he's pretty handily the GOAT of his particular style of psychadelic blues rock. I will agree with some of the others that the ideal version of this album is the original 11-track NA release, as every song on it is at least a 9/10 and the songs added in the extended re-release don't live up to that same level, but I'm not complaining too much because any Hendrix is good Hendrix. Seriously, the top tier songs on this album are some of my all-time favorites that I could listen to on repeat forever.

also, semi-related, made this about a year ago for a Kirby shitpost group



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Are You Experienced track ranking

17. Remember (Track #16)
Score: 17 (Average Rank: 13.71/17)
Biggest Fan(s): Seanchan (#9)
Biggest Detractor(s): CasanovaZelos (#17)

16. Can You See Me (Track #15)
Score: 19 (Average Rank: 13.43/17)
Biggest Fan(s): Raetsel_Lapin (#8)
Biggest Detractor(s): RyoCaliente (#17)

15. 51st Anniversary (Track #13)
Score: 34 (Average Rank: 11.71/17)
Biggest Fan(s): RyoCaliente (#2)
Biggest Detractor(s): Seanchan, Johnbobb (#17)

14. Stone Free (Track #12)
Score: 35 (Average Rank: 11/17)
Biggest Fan(s): RyoCaliente (#8)
Biggest Detractor(s): Raetsel_Lapin (#14)

13. May This Be Love (Track #5)
Score: 40 (Average Rank: 10.43/17)
Biggest Fan(s): Raetsel_Lapin (#5)
Biggest Detractor(s): HBJDubs (#17)

12. Red House (Track #17)
Score: 40 (Average Rank: 10.29/17)
Biggest Fan(s): Seanchan (#4)
Biggest Detractor(s): Johnbobb (#16)

11. I Don't Live Today (Track #6)
Score: 53 (Average Rank: 8.43/17)
Biggest Fan(s): Raetsel_Lapin, Johnbobb (#4)
Biggest Detractor(s): NFUN (#16)

10. Love or Confusion (Track #4)
Score: 54 (Average Rank: 9/17)
Biggest Fan(s): NFUN (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): CasanovaZelos (#15)

9. Are You Experienced? (Track #11)
Score: 54 (Average Rank: 8.43/17)
Biggest Fan(s): NFUN (#3)
Biggest Detractor(s): Seanchan (#14)

8. Fire (Track #8)
Score: 57 (Average Rank: 8.57/17)
Biggest Fan(s): Seanchan (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): Raetsel_Lapin (#16)

7. Foxey Lady (Track #10)
Score: 57 (Average Rank: 8.43/17)
Biggest Fan(s): HBJDubs (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): Seanchan (#13)

6. Third Stone From the Sun (Track #9)
Score: 59 (Average Rank: 8.29/17)
Biggest Fan(s): NFUN (#2)
Biggest Detractor(s): Raetsel_Lapin (#17)

5. The Wind Cries Mary (Track #7)
Score: 59 (Average Rank: 7.86/17)
Biggest Fan(s): Johnbobb (#2)
Biggest Detractor(s): HBJDubs (#16)

4. Manic Depression (Track #2)
Score: 61 (Average Rank: 7.29/17)
Biggest Fan(s): NFUN, CasanovaZelos (#4)
Biggest Detractor(s): HBJDubs (#13)

3. Highway Chile (Track #14)
Score: 68 (Average Rank: 7/17)
Biggest Fan(s): Raetsel_Lapin (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): CasanovaZelos (#16)

Raetsel_Lapin: Not entirely sure why, but I think this might be the most fun song from any of the albums we've ranked so far and I can't help but kinda love it as a result.

2. Hey Joe (Track #3)
Score: 79 (Average Rank: 5.71/17)
Biggest Fan(s): Raetsel_Lapin, HBJDubs, CasanovaZelos (#2)
Biggest Detractor(s): NFUN (#17)

Raetsel_Lapin: I absolutely love his vocal performance on this song and wish more of the tracks went for this sort of sound. I'd love an entire album of songs in this sort of style.

1. Purple Haze (Track #1)
Score: 103 (Average Rank: 3.43/17)
Biggest Fan(s): RyoCaliente, CasanovaZelos, Johnbobb (#1)
Biggest Detractor(s): NFUN, HBJDubs (#8)

Raetsel_Lapin: The rare song that I've heard far too many times and still haven't gotten sick of.

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tag, definitely going to rank this one

(though would've been better if "The Downward Spiral" were here instead, but can't complain I guess...)

man, Purple Haze and Hey Joe as the top 2 isn't a surprise but Highway Chile did much better than I expected and I thought for sure The Wind Cries Mary was gonna fill out the top 3

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Something I Can Never Have
Terrible Lie
Head Like a Hole
Down in It
Sin
Ringfinger
Sanctified
Kinda I Want To
The Only Time
That's What I Get

bump

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Tag, so that I remember this later.
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Up

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The reason I have not been immediately participating the last few weeks is because I am back in the office again and can no longer play music throughout the day...

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MartinFF7 posted...

tag, definitely going to rank this one

(though would've been better if "The Downward Spiral" were here instead, but can't complain I guess...)

to me (and I nominated this), PHM is a better collection of songs, and TDS might be the better cohesive album

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I can definitely appreciate that!

I only because a huge fan of NIN late in life (though I really liked "The Perfect Drug" when that came out), I still remember when, Winter 2007. Started with With Teeth and worked through the full discography thereafter. Pretty lucky timing with Year Zero that spring, then Ghosts I-IV and The Slip all happening within the year after that... good times.

Tag

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Bump

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1: Down In It
2: Terrible Lie
3: The Only Time
4: Sanctified
5: Something I Can Never Have
6: Ringfinger
7: Head Like A Hole
8: That's What I Get
9: Kinda I Want To
10: Sin
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Finally did a first listen. I've heard quite a few of their songs on the radio over the years but never actually listened to an album before. (That's got to be at least the dozenth time I've said that...)

Anyway, this is a very interesting album. That industrial sound is certainly something. Definitely some electronic influences on some tracks and a lot of repeated vocals. And some very provocative lyrics at points that caught even MY attention!

I didn't realize that NiN goes all the way back to the late 80s! They've always struck me as such a quintessential 90s band, though I suppose the height of their success is from the 90s, so...

I know NiN was big back when I was in middle/high school but I wasn't really into a lot of music back then. As I was listening, I was trying to decide if I would have liked this back in those days. I think I finally came around to "probably not", if only because I had a lot of bad music takes back then.

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Terrible Lie
Sin
Head Like A Hole
Sanctified
The Only Time
Ringfinger
Down In It
Something I can Never Have
Thats What I Get
Kinda I Want To

The raw synthetics on this album are so good, I kinda wish Trent made a album similar to this again

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up

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Listened to PHM more in the past week than I had in history up to this point. I put most NIN albums ahead of it, but there's still lots of quality in there... even if you can feel that "80s" sound bleeding in at times.

Also very tough because there's a clear top 4 for me, and a clear 10th place, but 5 through 9 are all pretty good. And sorting the top 4 also became pretty tough.

Anyways.

Terrible Lie
Something I Can Never Have
Sin
Head Like a Hole
Kinda I Want To
Down in It
That's What I Get
Ringfinger
Sanctified
The Only Time

MartinFF7 posted...

even if you can feel that "80s" sound bleeding in at times.

that's why it's the best album

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I feel like all of the songs on this album were my favorite at one point or another. The album is full of so many catchy bits and pieces, as well as production effects that stuck with me. Great album. This album was totally perfect for the teenage years.

Something I Can Never Have
Sin
The Only Time
Head Like a Hole
Terrible Lie
Down in It
Ringfinger
Sanctified
That's What I Get
Kinda I Want To


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Head like a hole / black as your soul is pretty much the quintessential angsty teenage male lyric

The Fragile is the album that got me into NIN and will probably always be my favorite NIN album, but Pretty Hate Machine is also great. And an album as long as The Fragile probably wouldnt have worked well for this topic anyway.

bump

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two more days

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1. Head Like a Hole
2. Sanctified
3. Something I Can Never Have
4. Sin
5. Terrible Lie
6. That's What I Get
7. Down in It
8. Kinda I Want To
9. Ringfinger
10. The Only Time

Fun fact: this is the only NIN album I own. And I don't even like it that much. Everything here seems pretty dated, even if I can see some seeds of NIN's vastly superior future work. It was very kind of the Jingle Cats to lend their voices to "The Only Time", one of the most grating songs of the 80s industrial dance scene by a mile. Reznor's lyrics try to be cerebral and intelligent like an LCD Soundsystem but end up coming across as corny, edgelord nonsense ("While the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car", that was a particularly hilarious highlight for me). The beats and production are repetitive, which I know is somewhat of the point, but when combined with the lyrics I was looking at the time waiting for this album to be over. It's not all bad though; Sanctified and Head Like a Hole both hit like any other hard rockers of the 80s, and the latter especially is where the repetitiveness works extremely well in the song's favor. It drives in the message and gives you something to remember it by when it's over. Something I Can Never Have is a decent enough slow-jam, that feels like a prototype for Hurt. Overall, I think NIN are a fantastic band, but this album is forgettable to me and I don't even enjoy it in short bursts to be perfectly honest.

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Nine Inch Nails' sound may have evolved from here, but there is something about the raw, dark synthesizers that really click with me, certainly more than any of NIN's albums after The Downward Spiral. Pretty Hate Machine feels like the most twisted take on synthpop and absolutely deserves to be considered a classic - perhaps not on the same level as Downward Spiral, but it stands as a distinct entity, and I would have loved to see Reznor do another album in this style.

My ranking:
Head Like a Hole (#1323 all-time)
Down in It
Terrible Lie
Sin
Sanctified
Ringfinger
Something I Can Never Have
Kinda I Want To
That's What I Get
The Only Time


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1. Head Like A Hole
2. Terrible Lie
3. Sin
4. Thats What I Get
5. Something I Can Never Have
6. The Only Time
7. Ringfinger
8. Kinda I Want To
9. Sanctified
10. Down In It

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1. Down In It
2. Head Like a Hole
3. Sanctified
4. Sin
5. Terrible Lie
6. Something I Can Never Have
7. The Only Time
8. Kinda I Want To
9. Ringfinger
10. That's What I Get

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I liked this.

1. Head Like a Hole
2. Terrible Lie
3. Down in It
4. Sin
5. Sanctified
6. The Only Time
7. That's What I Get
8. Ringfinger
9. Kinda I Want To
10. Something I Can Never Have


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1. Head Like a Hole
2. Ringfinger
3. Terrible Lie
4. Sin
5. Something I Can Never Have
6. Sanctified
7. The Only Time
8. That's What I Get
9. Down In It
10. Kinda I Want To

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I'm having a hard time working out how I feel about this album. On the one hand, a few of the tracks--mainly Sin--go a bit too hard on the industrial sound and are rather unpleasant to listen to. The lyrics also tend to be ludicrously repetitive: Head Like A Hole manages to have a dreadful pre-chorus, chorus, and post-chorus that all repeat themselves infinitely to the point of torture and it's not even the most egregious example on the album.

On the other hand, I do find a lot of things to love here. The lyrics are exactly the type of thing I'm into these days, Trent Reznor's vocals really work for me, and I rather dig the band's sound on some of these tracks. When they dial things back a bit, it's quite fantastic and very much my type of thing.

So... it's complicated, but I think the positives outweigh the negatives enough that I'll say I liked the album. I'd be quite interested in trying more NIN music in the future; it feels like they probably have several songs I'd love, if I spent enough time going through their catalogue to find them.
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Raetsel_Lapin posted...

So... it's complicated, but I think the positives outweigh the negatives enough that I'll say I liked the album. I'd be quite interested in trying more NIN music in the future; it feels like they probably have several songs I'd love, if I spent enough time going through their catalogue to find them.

I agree with this. This seems like a band I should explore more of.

HARD disagree about Sin though, that's my #1 song with a bullet here. Love the soundscape on that song.

In terms of the vocals, usually I enjoyed them. Then there's songs like Sanctified where there's just something about how he says some words that just drove me nuts.

1. Sin
2. Head Like a Hole
3. Ringfinger
4. Down in It
5. The Only Time
6. Kinda I Want To
7. Terrible Lie
8. That's What I Get
9. Sanctified
10. Something I Can Never Have

It continues to baffle me how much my feelings on the albums we rank changes based upon how/where I'm listening (car vs over ear cans vs bluetooth earbuds) and having to do an actual ranking. Of course it makes sense, but still...

I listened to Pretty Hate Machine in the car this afternoon and was like "yeah, this is pretty good". Then I did a relisten just now at my computer to finalize the ranking and it's like "eh, meh, whatever".

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I thought I would take a longer hiatus from this series after failing to become Experienced, but apparently not...

1. Something I Can Never Have
2. Down in It
3. Sanctified
4. Ringfinger
5. Head Like a Hole
6. Terrible Lie
7. The Only Time
8. Kinda I Want To
9. Thats What I Get
10. Sin

Kinda I like this album, surprisingly enough. However, while my opinions on most of the individual songs are substantially positive, the entire effort nonetheless adds up to something significantly lesser than the sum of its parts for me. I struggled to locate why exactly until I read some of the previous posts in this topic, in particular this one:
ChainLTTP posted...

Head like a hole / black as your soul is pretty much the quintessential angsty teenage male lyric

Extend this to the entire album and it quite largely puts my thoughts into words: this is pretty much the quintessential angsty teenage male take on synthpop. That musical tradition is one I'm quite fond of, but here it's handled in a way representative of all that I seek to distance myself from, or to put it still more dramatically, my antithesis. In sum, I suppose I enjoy Pretty Hate Machine quite a bit for what it is, just as long as I never have to listen to it again.

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How did I not see this all week? Ranking incoming?

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One of my all time favorite albums. There just isn't a bad track on this album at all. While some may say it's unrefined or even dated, you can hear everything that would go on the make NIN the band it became here. It's dark, moody, sometimes even filled with hollow anger, but it captures these feelings in a way that at times feels more mature than just "teen angst." I think we all grow past the sentiment expressed in "That's What I Get," but I'm not sure anyone every trully conquers that nagging feeling of "Something I Can Never Have."

Head Like a Hole
Something I Can Never Have
Sin
Sanctified
Terrible Lie
That's What I Get
Down In It
Ringfinger
The Only Time
Kinda I Want To

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Oh, yeah, can I also get on the list to nominate albums?

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