Head Like a Hole
by Nine Inch Nails
- 115
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 67
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Heavy radio rotation greeted "Head Like a Hole" when Nine Inch Nails released it as the second single from their debut album, Pretty Hate Machine, in 1989. It reached number 9 on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart. Devo, AFI, Buckcherry and Korn have all covered it, and it was rewritten as "On a Roll", performed by Miley Cyrus as Ashley O in the Black Mirror episode "Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too".
Trent Reznor wrote the song after touring in late 1988 as the support act for Skinny Puppy. It was the last one written for the album and came together quickly in his bedroom, taking about 15 minutes by one of his accounts and one day by another. He said he needed something to break the guitars out and be more aggressive, and producer Keith LeBlanc turned the aggression up further. Flood also produced it.
The video was filmed at the original Exit nightclub in Chicago, with the band performing in a cage. At Lollapalooza '91, Dave Navarro, Eric Avery, Gibby Haynes and Ice-T joined the band on stage as extra guitarists for it. In 1997 Reznor said he did not want to be singing "Head Like a Hole" at age 50.
Head Like a Hole runs at 115 BPM, the tempo of pop, funk and disco-leaning dance. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.09 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 522 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.