Nine Inch Nails: ‘Closer’ Video Turns 30
This week marks the anniversary of an iconic and controversial music video. On May 12, 1994, Trent Reznor and company bent our brains (and made many of us question our sexuality) with his visual interpretation of the Nine Inch Nails song “Closer.”
“Closer” is a standout track on the album The Downward Spiral, which came out just a couple of months before this video’s debut. The album propelled Nine Inch Nails, who were already loudly hailed in the industrial/rock scene at this point, fully into mainstream consciousness. Much can be said about this magnum opus from NIN, and even about the song itself, but it’s the video for “Closer” that marks it as required rock listening.
The video was directed by Mark Romanek (who, fun fact, also directed the video for “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift). The shocking imagery seen throughout the director’s cut was meant to illustrate the song’s themes of self-loathing and depression. It achieved just that, with plenty of grimy imagery packed into four minutes and thirty-six seconds. In our mad scientist’s laboratory, we encounter a nude, masked woman, a pig’s head, a live monkey, Reznor himself floating in mid-air, surrounded by devious devices of all kinds. The Linda Vista Community Hospital in Los Angeles, which was abandoned and rumored to be haunted, served as the backdrop.
The sexy, pop-adjacent dance beat that carried the visuals made them even more unsettling than if they had been paired with harsh and abrasive noise. Such is the challenging beauty of Reznor’s music and Romanek’s vision: the viewer can’t help but be hypnotized by the sound and simultaneously disturbed by the taboo visuals and the song’s dark lyrics.
Directors Label Volume 4: The Work Of Director Mark Romanek Directors Label DVD, Trent Reznor reflects on how this music video not only amplified the song, it may have outshined it: “The rarest of things occurred,” he said, “where the song sounded better to me, seeing it with the video. And it’s my song.”
Thirty years on, “Closer” is still unshakable from our psyche. Nine Inch Nails has since been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, released eleven studio albums total, scored multiple films and created plenty more music videos to feast our deviant eyes on.
The censored version of the video is below, and despite being edited, it’s still probably NSFW. You can find the uncensored director’s cut here.
Nine Inch Nails – “Closer”
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