Humiliation

<p>Here’s <a href="https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/theyre-really-close-to-my-body/">Johanna Hedva</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>...one of the reasons I’m so unabashedly a NIN fan, and have been for so long, is because they’ve never humiliated me as they’ve gone through the years, like nearly every other mainstream band I loved growing up in the 1990s. I can declare my love for them without having to suffer the scorn that so many of those bands now deserve for selling out in various, pathetic ways. Indeed, it’s recently felt as though all these years of cult devotion are being validated in a populist way, as NIN re-emerged in the late 2010s as a singular bastion of uncompromising artistic vision, the last men standing.</p> </blockquote> <p>(Holy shit, what a great article this is!)</p> <p>But yes, every band I loved as a kid eventually sold me out, too. They disappointed me by turning into right wing weirdos or being horrendous and violent or having terribly useless opinions about the world, but—but!—Nine Inch Nails never did. Reznor and Ross never compromised themselves, never embarrassed me in the way that a drunk parent might.</p>