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A New Experience
🕑 Added 2025-08-15 13:00:21 +0000 UTC
I've listened to Hurt - both versions - probably hundreds of times over the years.
It's a song that's both stood as the culmination of a one-hour descent into self-inflicted madness, and a stand-alone three minute tearjerker. It's represented the realization of a young-man whose thrown themselves down a well, and an elder looking back upon their life during the final months.
What it's never done for me personally is really hit me.
Don't get me wrong, I've always seen it as a great finale since first listening to The Downward Spiral start to finish, but it's never been a track I've instinctively gone to or thought about after the record ends. Though... there's only a handful of songs that've ever accomplished that, so this doesn't really say anything about the song.
What did say something was what I felt hearing it live at last week's show.
The last thirty-minutes had been a ceaseless rollercoaster of the band's most cathartic songs, and even David Bowie's I'm Afraid of Americans which of course Trent produced. Hearing Hurt play at the end wasn't at all a surprise, nor was it played notably different - like some of the other songs that night - it's not even hearing it at my age now.
I've registered how much "Everyone I know goes away in the end" means now compared to ten years ago, having worn my own crown of shit - or thorns - over broken thoughts I cannot repair beneath the stains of time, but I've still never wept when hearing Trent sing about this pain through the thick layers of abrasive ambience.
Yet, this time, sitting in my seat, hearing "Everyone I know goes away in the end" in an Arena filled with thousands people from all walks of life having an amazing time in it because of this show, it hit me.
It really hit me.
One of the things I've always loved about Art, one of the reasons I started writing articles and editing videos about it, is how everybody can look at the same thing and take something completely different from it.
One of the things I've experienced a lot this year that I'm loving just as much is how much I alone can take something completely different from the same work of art.
Part of going through KMFDM's Discography - and recommending Hau Ruck to y'all - was hearing Stray Bullet, a song that I've known since I first played Test Drive 5 on the Playstation as a child, one I've never liked...
And falling in love with it.
Hearing Hurt at the NIN show was just the latest version of that. One I wasn't expecting, but immediately welcomed after the initial shock of feeling the tears starting to form in my eyes.
