Wiki
-
Length
4:04
"Something I Can Never Have" is the fifth track on the 1989 release Pretty Hate Machine. It is apparently a song about lost love and missed chances, though the true story about the song isn't widely (or at all) known. It is the first chronological song in which Trent Reznor plays a piano and in which he uses the word "fuck" ("fading fucking reminder"). A stripped-down version can be found on Still, which has an accompanying performance video released at the time on nin.com.
The Pretty Hate Machine version begins with the decending pitch drone that segues in from "Sanctified" as the piano that dominates for most of the song creeps in. The song is notable for its ambient backing, including conflicting sounds of machinery and nature such as the buzzes, hisses and door slams that accompany the music as well as the ambience of wind and chirping birds buried far behind the "industrial noises." The song itself is fairly straightforward and gets louder as it progresses; notably, Reznor's vocals seem to grow in volume and emotion as the song progresses, the song surging up as it enters the last chorus. After it, the ambience suddenly drops out on the last few lines, draining away and only leaving the chirping birds in the background. The "atmospheric keyboards" in the song are sampled from an unused This Mortal Coil session. On the 2010 remastered vinyl edition, the song begins the second side; as such, it lacks the drone guitar at the beginning, simply starting with the lone piano motif before the bass synth joins in and the song proceeds as usual.
The Still stripped-down reworking consists of Reznor on piano and vocals, and Jerome Dillon on guitar. It is the first track on Still and follows the general arrangement of the song, though it completely lacks any of the "industrial ambience" of the original version save for an odd guitar whine during the latter half of the song. It is also nearly a minute longer than its Pretty Hate Machine counterpart.
Track descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
![Cruel Melody [Explicit Version]](https://lastfm.freetls.fastly.net/i/u/300x300/a61d2c57281848ac9aec4a5a02095aa4.jpg)
