All the holiday stuff has me messed up and I could have sworn yesterday was Tuesday when it was Wednesday. On well, I’ll be a day late and at least a dollar short.

This week’s highlight song comes 1994 and the soundtrack to the film Natural Born Killers. Trent Reznor was the producer of that soundtrack so it’s not shocking that Nine Inch Nails wound up on the album. In fact, three NIN songs are found there, though Burn is the only one that was new. Burn was also released as a single from the soundtrack but either did not chart or chart info is not available.

Burn is also available on certain reissues of The Downward Spiral.

As for Burn’s place in the film, that is information that is a bit tough to track down. It does appear at the movie’s end in certain “director’s cut” and unrated versions of the film, but is not present in the theatrical release and many modern versions on streaming.

Burn is a song very indebted to the electronic soundscape, something Reznor had pursued a lot on his 1994 album The Downward Spiral, often hailed as his magnum opus. Burn does cut a fair bit heavier than a lot of TDS material, something of a callback to the 1992 EP Broken. There is distortion on pretty much everything in the song save vocals. Things do build somewhat quietly to an angry climax, but it is still very noisy even in that build.

Lyrically, Burn is a song of hatred and misanthropy. It is lashing out at being a reject of society and using the hurt and anger to seek revenge and burn the world down. It is extremely harsh stuff, perhaps dismissed by some as angsty nonsense, but qutie disturbing in an objective evaluation. It was the perfect song for a movie about a killer like Mickey Knox, a person who was pretty well cursed from birth and would embody the song’s lyrics in his actions through the film.

Burn got a music video, culled from scenes of Natural Born Killers that are all apparently cut from the original movie release. (no verification on that) I will post the video below but it is from an unofficial source and might not escape the wrath of YouTube AI copyright hunter bots.

Burn has been in pretty regular rotation in Nine Inch Nails live setlists – it is the band’s 14^th most played song with 404 total airings, according to setlist.fm. Sadly they didn’t play it when I saw them live in 2000, but you can’t win ’em all. Its appearance on the 2007 live video release Beside You In Time is hailed as a standout of a fantastic live set.

This song did get some sideways glances in 1999 after the Columbine High School massacre. The killers were fond of Nine Inch Nails and often incorporated The Downward Spiral lyrics and references into their journals. The band took a fair bit of heat as a scapegoat for the murders and Burn was referenced a fair bit as a conduit to world decay, but in the end everyone moved on and NIN pressed on along with Burn.

In the end, Burn is a fantastic cut from the impressive Nine Inch Nails catalog. It fit the movie it was written for like a glove, and the song has gone on to be a feature in live sets even without the benefit of appearing on an album. It is “angsty crap,” but there’s something more visceral and real about this sort of angst. It is more than hollow-heading ranting at something just for fun, this is a true connection to the type of rage and anguish of being a “failed” member of society can bring.