Nine Inch Nails Surprise Fans by Web-Releasing New "Ghosts" Album

Nine Inch Nails have unleashed a new, thirty-six-song instrumental album called Ghosts I-IV, which is available for download right now. The album, recorded over a ten-week stretch last fall, is what Trent Reznor calls "a soundtrack for daydreams." "I've been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn't have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective -- dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture," Reznor said on the Ghosts Web site. "I'm very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference." Reznor parted ways with his Interscope in late 2007.

Much like Radiohead's novel In Rainbows sales scheme, Ghosts I-IV is available in a multitude of different formats at different costs. For free, people who visit the Ghosts site can download nine of the thirty-six tracks (Ghosts I) as 320kbps DRM-free MP3s, as well as a forty-page PDF file full of digital extras. For five dollars, you can download all thirty-six tracks, either from the site or from the Amazon MP3 store. There are also $10 (for two CDs), $75 (hardcover book, 2 CDs, DVD) and $300 (limited edition of 2,500 set signed and numbered by Reznor) options. Ghosts I-IV's arrival follows a cryptic post made by Reznor on February 17th on the NIN Web site that hinted that there would be a major announcement in "two weeks."

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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