Editing Pretty Hate Machine (section)

==Music and lyrics==
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 |quote ="I wasn't proud of a lot of the things I was saying," Reznor recalled, "but I said to myself, 'Well, no one's going to hear this stuff anyway.' ... The record is honest and that's where its power came from."|source =Trent Reznor<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Elliott|first=Paul|title=Going Down…|magazine=[[Kerrang!]]|location=London|issue=769|date=September 25, 1999|page=14}}</ref> |align = left |width = 28% |border = 1px |fontsize = 90% |quoted = true |salign = center
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Unlike the [[industrial music]] of Nine Inch Nails' contemporaries, ''Pretty Hate Machine'' displays catchy [[riff (music)|riffs]] and [[verse-chorus form|verse-chorus]] song structures rather than repetitive electronic beats.<ref name="Huey" /> Reznor's lyrics express adolescent angst and feelings of betrayal by lovers, society, or God.<ref name="Huey" /> Themes of despair are collocated with lovesick sentiments.<ref name="Pareles" /> ''[[Pitchfork (website)|Pitchfork]]''{{'}}s Tom Breihan categorized it as a [[synth-pop]] album that was shaped by industrial music's "nascent [[New wave music|new-wave]] period rather than its subsequent styles."<ref name="Breihan" /> According to Breihan, the beats were muscular, but not in the vein of [[heavy metal music|metal]] or [[post-punk]], and that the most [[rock music|rock]]-inspired song on the album was "[[Head Like a Hole]]".<ref name="Breihan" />

Journalist [[Jon Pareles]] described the album as "[[Electronic rock|electro-rock]] or [[industrial rock]], using drum machines, computerized synthesizer riffs and obviously processed sounds to detail, and usually denounce, an artificial world."<ref name="Pareles" /> Tom Popson of the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]'' called it a [[electronic dance music|dance]] album partly characterized by [[industrial dance music|industrial dance]]'s aggressive sound: "Reznor's electronics-plus-guitar LP also carries a brighter techno-pop element that might remind some of [[Depeche Mode]]. Things occasionally mellow out to moody atmospherics, while Reznor's vocals range from whispers to screams."<ref name="Popson1">{{cite news|last=Popson|first=Tom|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1990-01-26-9001080016-story.html|title=Dancing Through Disillusion With Nine Inch Nails|newspaper=[[Chicago Tribune]]|date=January 26, 1990|access-date=January 2, 2014}}</ref> ''[[Option (music magazine)|Option]]'' magazine also characterized Reznor's sound as "industrial dance noise", referring to "Head Like a Hole" and "Terrible Lie" as "[[techno]]", but compared the "raspy, angry vocals" to [[David Lee Roth]] with "[[Punk rock|punk]] intentions".<ref name="Option"/> ''[[Billboard (magazine)|Billboard]]'' classified ''Pretty Hate Machine'' as "[[Dance-rock|DOR]]...with an industrial edge", saying "NIN make a stellar bow worth investigating."<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Coleman |first=Bill |date=25 November 1989 |title=Dance Trax: New Music On Alternative Tip Sparks The Scene |magazine=[[Billboard (magazine)|Billboard]] |location=New York |publisher=P-MRC |volume=101 |issue=47 |page=31 |id={{ProQuest|1438703165}}}}</ref> ''[[Spin (magazine)|Spin]]'' described the album as "dance music where technology reigns and sexual innuendoes abound", adding, "Trent Reznor's one-man band comes across like an accessible [[Front 242]], an intelligent [[Nitzer Ebb]] or a primal screaming Depeche Mode."<ref name="Spin blurb">{{cite magazine |last=Reinhardt |first=Robin |date=1 January 1990 |title=Heavy Rotation - Staff Selections |work=[[Spin (magazine)|Spin]] |location=New York |volume=5 |issue=10 |page=18 |id={{ProQuest|1286588280}}}}</ref> Retrospectively, ''[[PopMatters]]''{{'}} AJ Ramirez regarded the album as "a synthesizer-dominated industrial dance record that on occasion slipped under the alternative rock banner."<ref>{{cite web|last=Ramirez|first=AJ|url=http://www.popmatters.com/post/187442-caught-in-the-machine-nine-inch-nails-broken/|title=Caught in the Machine: Nine Inch Nails' 'Broken'|website=[[PopMatters]]|date=November 11, 2014|access-date=March 5, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160806000017/http://www.popmatters.com/post/187442-caught-in-the-machine-nine-inch-nails-broken/|archive-date=August 6, 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Reznor has humorously described ''Pretty Hate Machine'' as "the all-purpose [[alternative rock|alternative]] album," remarking that "if you want to [[stage diving|stage dive]] to it, you can, but if you're a big Depeche Mode fan, you can get what you need out of it as well."<ref name="Perry1" /> Reznor further stated: "I like electronic music, but I like it to have some aggression. That 'first wave' of electro music – [[The Human League|Human League]] and [[Devo]] – that's the easiest way to use it. To be able to get some humanity and aggression into it in a cool way, that's the thing&nbsp;... ''Pretty Hate Machine'' is a record you can listen to and get more out of each time. To me, something like [[Front 242]] is the opposite: great at first but, after 10 listens, that's it."<ref name="Perry1" /> Reznor additionally cited [[Depeche Mode]]'s 1986 album ''[[Black Celebration]]'' as a driving influence, stating that "DM was one of our favorite bands and the ''Black Celebration'' record took my love for them to a new level."<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Legaspi |first=Althea |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/trent-reznor-tony-hawk-talk-depeche-mode-fandom-112324/ |title=Trent Reznor, Tony Hawk Talk Depeche Mode Fandom |magazine=[[Rolling Stone]] |date=11 May 2017 |access-date=11 May 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190214030001/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/trent-reznor-tony-hawk-talk-depeche-mode-fandom-112324/ |archive-date=14 February 2019}}</ref>

In a commentary on the album, [[Tom Hull (critic)|Tom Hull]] said that Reznor's "notion of industrial is closer to [[New Order (band)|New Order]] new wave, but with a harder metallic gleam and more [[dystopian]] attitude."<ref>{{cite web|last=Hull|first=Tom|author-link=Tom Hull (critic)|date=July 29, 2015|url=http://www.tomhull.com/ocston/blog/archives/2292-Rhapsody-Streamnotes-July-2015.html|title=Rhapsody Streamnotes (July 2015)|website=Tom Hull - On the Web|access-date=June 22, 2020}}</ref>

===Samples===
[[Prince (musician)|Prince]], [[Jane's Addiction]], and [[Public Enemy (band)|Public Enemy]] are listed in the liner notes as artists whose music was sampled on the album. Segments of Prince's "[[Alphabet St.]]" and Jane's Addiction's "[[Nothing's Shocking|Had a Dad]]" can be heard in "Ringfinger". Other samples were edited or distorted so as to be unrecognizable, such as the introduction to "Kinda I Want To". "Something I Can Never Have" features unused backing tracks created by John Fryer for [[This Mortal Coil]].<ref name="Doerschuk" />

Reznor stated, "I was tempted to lay in more of other people‘s stuff, but I thought that would lend a real dated quality to the record, seeing where that has gone the way it has in [[Hip hop music|hip-hop]]."<ref name="Doerschuk" /> Time constraints similarly prevented him from accumulating "good sounds" as he wanted.<ref name="Doerschuk" /> He obtained "weird percussion tracks" by sampling loops from artists like Public Enemy, playing them backwards and modulating them in [[Avid Audio|Macintosh Turbosynth]] with an oscillator tuned to the pitch of the song, obtaining "this weird flanging-type thing that's in key".<ref name="Doerschuk" /> He said that "every drum fill on 'Terrible Lie' is lifted intact from somewhere. There are six other songs playing through that cut, recorded on tape, in and out, depending on where they worked."<ref name="Doerschuk" />