It Hurts, Again!

Hurt

I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that's real
the needle tears a hole
the old familiar sting
try to kill it all away
but I remember everything
what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt

I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
upon my liar's chair
full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
beneath the stains of time
the feelings disappear
you are someone else
I am still right here

what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt

I will let you down
I will make you hurt

if I could start again
a million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

- Trent Reznor

Hearing Johnny Cash perform this song, can move you to tears.

Play on Real Player or WM

He brings all his pain, years of drug addiction, his struggles with his inner demons, and makes this song - his own.

Here was Reznor's reaction to Cash's performance.

"I pop the video in, and wow… Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps… Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore. … It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning—different, but every bit as pure."

Hurting oneself, or more specifically, cutting oneself, is supposed to be one of these horrid hobbies young people in some civilized countries indulge in, just to know, they can still feel! When Nine Inch Nails, first performed this song, that was the core audience, this song was targeted at.



Cash was given these lyrics, along with a bunch of others, of which he had to choose a couple and perform. He had no background on this song.