The Fragile
The Fragile is the third studio album by the American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released as a double album by Nothing Records and Interscope Records on September 21, 1999. It was produced by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and the English producer Alan Moulder, a longtime Reznor collaborator. It was recorded throughout 1997 to 1999 in New Orleans.
Looking to depart from the distorted production of their previous album, The Downward Spiral, the album features elements of ambient and electronic music within a wide variety of genres. The album continues some of the lyrical themes from The Downward Spiral, including depression and drug abuse. The album notably contains more instrumental sections than their previous work, with some entire tracks being instrumentals. The Fragile is also one of the band's longest studio releases, clocking in at nearly 1 hour and 45 minutes long. The record was promoted with three singles: "The Day the World Went Away", "We're in This Together", and "Into the Void", as well as the promotional single "Starfuckers, Inc." and an accompanying tour, the Fragility Tour, which spanned two legs. Several accompanying recordings were also released, including a remix album, Things Falling Apart, a live album, And All That Could Have Been, as well as an alternate version of the record, The Fragile: Deviations 1.
Upon release, critics applauded the album's ambition and composition, although some criticized its length and perceived lack of lyrical substance. However, in the years following its release, it has come to be regarded by many critics and listeners to be among the band's best work. The album debuted at number one in the U.S. to become the band's first chart-topper, and was eventually certified double platinum by the RIAA.
Writing and recording
The Fragile was produced by Trent Reznor and Alan Moulder at Nothing Studios in New Orleans. There were some personnel changes within Nine Inch Nails after the Self-Destruct tour, which saw drummer Chris Vrenna replaced by Bill Rieflin and Jerome Dillon, the latter of whom would become Nine Inch Nails' full-time drummer until late 2005. Charlie Clouser and Danny Lohner contributed occasional instrumentation and composition to several tracks although the album was predominantly written and performed by Reznor alone. The Fragile was mixed by Alan Moulder and mastered by Tom Baker. The packaging was created by David Carson and Rob Sheridan.According to a February 2000 interview in Keyboard Magazine, two of the album's programmers, Charlie Clouser and Keith Hillebrandt, disclosed some synths used in the album's production, among them: Clavia Nord Lead 2, Waldorf Pulse and Microwave, Minimoog, Oberheim Xpander, Novation Bass Station, Sequential Circuits Prophet-VS, and the Access Virus.
Music and lyrics
Over a year before the album's release, Reznor suggested, perhaps with intentional or dismissive misdirection, that the album would "be irritating to people because it's not traditional Nine Inch Nails. Think of the most ridiculous music you could ever imagine with nursery rhymes over the top of it. A bunch of pop songs."In contrast to the heavily distorted instruments and gritty industrial sounds of their previous album, The Downward Spiral, The Fragile relies more on soundscapes, electronic beats, ambient noise, rock-laden guitar, and the usage of melodies as harmonies. Several critics noted that the album was seemingly influenced by progressive rock, art rock, electronica, and avant-garde music. It is categorized as an art rock album by The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Edna Gundersen of USA Today, and Will Hermes of Entertainment Weekly. Hermes views that, like "art-rockers" King Crimson and David Bowie, Reznor incorporates elements of 20th-century classical music on the album, "mixing prepared piano melodies à la John Cage with thematic flavor from Claude Debussy". Music journalist Ann Powers observes elements of progressive rock bands King Crimson and Roxy Music, Reznor's influences, and the experimentation of electronica artists such as Autechre and Squarepusher, and writes that The Fragile uses funk bass lines, North African minor-key modalities, and the treatment of tonality by Symbolist composers like Debussy. The album also features several distorted guitar parts which Powers suggests that fans can enjoy. Rob Sheffield observes a "prog-rock vibe" akin to Pink Floyd's 1979 album The Wall and feels that The Fragile is similarly "a double album that vents... alienation and misery into paranoid studio hallucinations, each track crammed with overdubs until there's no breathing room".
Described by Reznor as a sequel to The Downward Spiral—an album with a plot detailing the destruction of a man—The Fragile is a concept album dealing with his personal issues, including depression, angst, and drug abuse. His vocals, for the most part, are more melodic and somewhat softer, a departure from his harsh and often angry singing in previous works. However, several music critics including Reznor noticed the lack of lyrics on the album. The Bulletin interprets it as an industrial rock album about "fear and loathing that could compete with Pink Floyd's The Wall". In some ways, The Fragile is a response to The Downward Spiral. Reznor compared the lyrical content of the two albums:
The song "I'm Looking Forward to Joining You, Finally" is credited in the album's booklet as "for clara", suggesting that the song's topic, like "The Day the World Went Away", is about Reznor's grandmother, Clara Clark. Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk singled out "The Wretched" for comment: "I remember being amazed when I first heard this... This wasn't just ennui: this was an active, aggressive, angry lack of caring. It's not 'Let's kill ourselves'; it's 'Let's kill each other'... It's not rock 'n' roll and it's not classical. It's something in between." According to a CIA document entitled Guidelines for Interrogation Methods the song "Somewhat Damaged" was one of 13 songs played to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, supposedly as a means of torture.
Packaging
The cover artwork was designed by David Carson. A section within his book Fotografiks reveals that the top section of the album cover is from a photo of a waterfall and the bottom section is from a closeup photo of the inside of a seashell. Carson elaborated on this further in an image on his website:Promotion
Fragility Tour
On September 10, 1998, at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards, a thirty-second teaser trailer was shown on television to promote the then untitled album. It would be more than a year before the album was finally released. The first single, "The Day the World Went Away", was released two months before the album. "Into the Void" and "We're in This Together" proved to be the album's most successful singles. The B-side "Starfuckers, Inc." was released on the album as a track at the last minute, and served as a promotional single for The Fragile. In support of The Fragile, the Nine Inch Nails live band reformed for the Fragility tour. The tour began in late 1999 and lasted until mid-2000, spanning Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and North America. The tour consisted of two major legs, labeled Fragility 1.0 and Fragility 2.0. The live band lineup remained largely the same from the previous tour in support of The Downward Spiral, featuring Robin Finck on guitar, Charlie Clouser on keyboards, and Danny Lohner on bass guitar. Reznor held open auditions to find a new drummer, eventually picking then-unknown Jerome Dillon. Nine Inch Nails' record label at the time, Interscope Records, reportedly refused to fund the promotional tour following The Fragile's lukewarm sales. Reznor instead committed to fund the entire tour himself, which quickly sold out. He concluded that "the reality is, I'm broke at the end of the tour", but also added, "I will never present a show that isn't fantastic." The tour featured increasingly large production values, including a triptych video display created by contemporary video artist Bill Viola. Rolling Stone magazine named Fragility the best tour of 2000. In 2002, the tour documentary And All That Could Have Been was released featuring performances from the Fragility 2.0 tour. While making the DVD, Reznor commented on the tour in retrospect by saying "I thought the show was really, really good when we were doing it", but later wrote that "I can't watch it at all. I was sick for most of that tour and I really don't think it was Nine Inch Nails at its best."Reznor's drug dependence and overdose in 2000
In the years leading up to the Fragility Tour, Reznor’s personal life had been complicated by addiction and grief. Following the commercial breakthrough of The Downward Spiral, Reznor struggled privately with alcohol and drug use, which intensified after the death of his grandmother, the woman who had raised him. The loss profoundly destabilized him, and he began using substances heavily to cope. Cocaine and alcohol became central to his daily routine, with sessions often blurring into days of self-destructive excess. The recording of The Fragile took place during this period. Reznor later acknowledged that he was frequently incapable of writing lyrics or focusing on production because of withdrawal and intoxication. Although The Fragile was widely acclaimed upon release in 1999, Reznor himself could not appreciate its reception. In an interview cited by Exclaim!, he admitted that during this era "nothing felt good anymore, not music, not success, not anything". By the time the Fragility Tour began, Reznor was carrying the weight of his addictions into one of the most elaborate and demanding concert productions of his career. The most serious crisis occurred in June 2000, during the European leg of the tour in London. According to The Guardian, Reznor obtained what he thought was cocaine but which turned out to be heroin, specifically a highly potent form sometimes referred to as "China white", a type of fentanyl. After ingesting the drug, he collapsed and suffered a near-fatal overdose, requiring emergency medical care. The episode forced the cancellation of concerts and marked the lowest point of Reznor's life.The overdose left Reznor shaken. Though he continued to downplay the severity of his addiction immediately afterward, the London episode planted the realization that he was no longer in control. Several planned European performances were canceled, and Nine Inch Nails temporarily withdrew from touring. By 2001, Reznor entered rehabilitation, beginning the process of recovery. In interviews, he has repeatedly cited the 2000 overdose as the moment that forced him to confront the reality of his addictions. In a 2005 conversation he stated: "If I drink again I’ll probably die. And I don’t want to die."