The Story Behind The Song / Album (and Song Meanings)
 

This is a thread for you to post any backstories behind the songs or albums you've heard. Do you have any really interesting ones that you've heard? Maybe even some dodgy stories that didn't really seem to fit with the lyrical content of the song? Let us know.

Because it might be harder to know the stories behind the music I've included putting song meanings as well. If you want to decipher meanings to songs then post ones that you find intriguing please. This thread is mostly for posts about artist backstories behind their songs / albums though, keep that in mind. :)

I'll start with some NIN

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
(backstory about the recording of the album)
http://vidassonoras.files.wordpress....ard-spiral.jpg
Taken from Wikipedia:
"To record the album, Reznor rented the house located at 10050 Cielo Drive in Beverly Hills, California where actress Sharon Tate was murdered by members of the Manson Family in 1969. Reznor built a studio space in the house which he named Le Pig, after the message that was scrawled on the front door with Tate's blood by her murderers. Reznor told Entertainment Weekly that despite the notoriety attached to the house, he chose to record there because, "I looked at a lot of places, and this just happened to be the one I liked most." Reznor moved out of the house in December 1993, after he said "there was too much history in that house for me to handle." After the album's recording, Reznor moved out and the house was demolished shortly thereafter."

I've always found it interesting that Trent Reznor made the choice to record the album there of all places. Maybe he just needed to feel a drastic change in himself just as his music changed or was changing. The Downward Spiral is constantly bleak with many nihilistic views throughout. It is a major departure to go to such a dark place after Pretty Hate Machine but the album is regarded as the best NIN album to date. I agree, I love this album. To get into that frame of mind maybe Reznor needed to record differently and be out of a comfort zone? In the end it may have been too much to bear, which leads to questions of 'how far you will go to stretch your creativity?' and 'how far would you go for the sake of your art?'

This is what Trent Reznor told Rolling Stone in 1997 about recording in the infamous house:
"While I was working on Downward Spiral, I was living in the house where Sharon Tate was killed. Then one day I met her sister. It was a random thing, just a brief encounter. And she said: 'Are you exploiting my sister's death by living in her house?' For the first time, the whole thing kind of slapped me in the face. I said, 'No, it's just sort of my own interest in American folklore. I'm in this place where a weird part of history occurred.' I guess it never really struck me before, but it did then. She lost her sister from a senseless, ignorant situation that I don't want to support. When she was talking to me, I realized for the first time, 'What if it was my sister?' I thought, '**** Charlie Manson.' I went home and cried that night. It made me see there's another side to things, you know?"