Though he’s still best known for popularising industrial music in the 1990s, Trent Reznor is a broadminded chap. Indeed, he seems to have something of a penchant for chart pop, if his choice of favourite song of 2024 is anything to go by.
On the red carpet at the Golden Globes last weekend Reznor was collared by an interviewer from LA radio station 98.7 and asked to name his top tune of last year. And didn’t need to umm and ahh for long, saying: “I’m gonna have to go with Espresso.”
Sabrina Carpenter’s megahit spent most of the summer and beyond squatting in the UK Top 5, spending seven weeks at Number One. It ended up becoming Spotify’s second most streamed song of 2024, coming in just behind Billie Eilish’s Birds Of A Feather.
It’s not the first time Reznor has admitted to having a soft spot for a mainstream pop song, either. In 2023 he let slip that Dua Lipa’s Levitating made him “tear up” when he heard his daughter sing it.
In an interview on the podcast Tetragrammatron, he revealed that whilst he thought that pop music “sucks generally”, he made an exception with Levitating: “She is so into it and it is so cool. It really reminded me of the art of writing a well-crafted song - I teared up listening to a Dua Lipa track, because it was just a really well-done piece of music, you know?”
“[My daughter’s] execution was spot on,” he added. “When she got to the ‘sugarboo’ line, it broke me.”
Reznor, along with his musical partner Atticus Ross, came away from the Globes with the Best Original Score award for their work on Challengers. They’re also nominated in two categories in March’s Oscars, for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.
The pair have also reportedly started work on a new Nine Inch Nails record. Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter last month, Reznor said that they were: “taking the inspiration we’ve garnered and funnelling it into a Nine Inch Nails project, which we’re working on now. We’re ready to be back in the driver’s seat.”
The band haven’t released a new record since 2020’s ambient double album Ghosts V-VI.
