{"id":800717,"date":"2019-10-25T12:27:18","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T18:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=903889"},"modified":"2019-10-25T12:27:18","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T18:27:18","slug":"trent-reznor-breaks-silence-on-undeniably-hooky-old-town-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/trent-reznor-breaks-silence-on-undeniably-hooky-old-town-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Trent Reznor Breaks Silence on \u2018Undeniably Hooky\u2019 \u2018Old Town Road\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

When Trent Reznor<\/a> first heard \u201cOld Town Road,\u201d he was surprised. The song used a short section of banjo from \u201c34 Ghosts IV,\u201d<\/a> a track off of Nine Inch Nails\u2019 mostly instrumental 2008 album Ghosts I\u2013IV<\/em> that Lil Nas X<\/a> and producer YoungKio had souped up with trap beats and an unforgettable chorus. Hearing his music out of context, Reznor\u2019s gut reaction was less critical than visceral.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, when you hear your stuff turned into something else, it always feels awkward because it\u2019s something that intimately came from you in some way,\u201d Reznor tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. He likens it to being taken aback at hearing the way Johnny Cash turned his sparsely gothic Downward Spiral<\/em> track \u201cHurt,\u201d which references drug use, into an acoustic country love song. \u201cYou feel a little bit violated, you know?\u201d he laughs. \u201cAnd then you get over that, and you realize it has become something else, and the Johnny Cash thing is incredible. It\u2019s very flattering.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThe music from Ghosts<\/em> that turned into \u2018Old Town Road\u2019 certainly didn\u2019t come from as intimate a place as the song \u2018Hurt\u2019 did, but it\u2019s still something that I remember what I was thinking about when we did it and then you hear it turned into this other thing \u2014 it feels strange at first,\u201d he continues. \u201cBut I thought he did a good job with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song, which features Reznor and his Nine Inch Nails collaborator Atticus Ross as co-writers, has since become the longest-running Number One record in Billboard<\/em>\u2018s chart history. Reznor was speaking with Rolling Stone<\/em> for an upcoming interview about his and Ross\u2019 score for HBO\u2019s Watchmen.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe way it was presented to me originally is I got a call from my management saying, \u2018We got a call from a panicked manager saying they had used the sample of something off Ghosts<\/em>,’\u201d Reznor recalls. \u201c\u2018They should have cleared it, but it didn\u2019t get cleared. It\u2019s picking up some steam on the viral Spotify charts. What do you think about that?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Look, I\u2019m fine with it. I get how stuff goes. They\u2019re not saying they didn\u2019t sample it. Just work it out, but don\u2019t be a roadblock to this.\u2019 I hadn\u2019t heard it yet. Then a few weeks later, I was like, \u2018Holy shit.’\u201d<\/p>\n