Nine Inch Nails Plan Collaborative Album, 2020 Tour

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have come up with a “template” for the next Nine Inch Nails album: a record of collaborations. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll release it.

“We thought, kind of playing on the newfound spirit of collaboration that scoring has forced us into, seeing what happens when we mix our DNA with some other people, with a no pressure environment. Let’s see what happens,” Reznor recently told Revolver. “If something good happens, then maybe the world can hear it. But if it doesn’t, we put it in the pile with the others.”

Even if Nine Inch Nails doesn’t release new music, though, Reznor said the band will hit the road again soon. “We’re talking about doing some shows next year, maybe,” he said. “Probably in the last half of the year.”

Elsewhere, in the Revolver interview, Reznor discussed the impact Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” — which includes a sample of Nine Inch Nails’ “34 Ghosts IV” in it — has had on his life personally. “That one stuck in for quite some time, and now it’s made its way to where my kids are [playing] Just Dance 2020 and they’re performing aerobic workouts to ‘Old Town Road (Remix),’” he said.

Earlier this year, Reznor told Rolling Stone that he didn’t want to get in the way of the success of “Old Town Road,” even though hearing his music in a country-rap song felt alien to him.

“You feel a little bit violated, you know?” he said with a laugh, comparing it to when Johnny Cash covered “Hurt.” “And then you get over that, and you realize it has become something else, and the Johnny Cash thing is incredible. It’s very flattering. The music from Ghosts that turned into ‘Old Town Road’ certainly didn’t come from as intimate a place as the song ‘Hurt’ did, but … it [still] feels strange at first. … I thought [Lil Nas X] did a good job with [the sample].”