1. Nine Inch NailsThe Downward Spiral
‘Closer’ was a big song. ‘Get My Bang’ was the flagship track for our album and I guess it’s a mirror up to ‘Closer’. For me it’s a beautiful pop song, but yet so outrageous. The line: "I want to fuck you like an animal." Like, how dare he? I think I wanted to inject that self-loathing, almost masochistic element of sexuality in pop music into what we did.
Strangely I kind of twinned it with ‘SexyBack’ by Justin Timberlake. That was the slick counterbalance that I wanted. The Downward Spiral in general was really a warm place, which triggered the whole outlook for how we made the record, re-engaging with that heaviness, sonically, and the emotional effect of that heaviness and how it spoke to me again like it spoke to me as a teenager, trying to harness the power of that.
