You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.

I'm Rishikesh Herway.

Trent Reznor started Nine-Eight-Nails in 1988.

He released eight albums, sold over 20 million records, one two Grammys, and was nominated for 11 more.

In 2010, Trent Reznor and his longtime collaborator, Atticus Ross, scored the film The Social Network, and they won an Oscar for it.

A few years later, in 2016, Atticus Ross joined Nine-Eight-Nails as an official member.

Now, as a duo, their most recent release is Add Violence, an EP.

And in this episode, Trent and Atticus break down a song from it called The Lovers.

I am Trent Reznor. A year and a half ago, we've decided that the next major Nine-Eight-Nails work,

rather than one kind of lengthy album, we'd split it up into EPs, and that Plan is three.

The first of which was not the actual events.

Very kind of aggressive return to guitars and confrontational type of music.

And it was fun. It was exciting.

The current EP Add Violence, which The Lovers is from, when we started that out, it was less defined what it was going to be.

It wasn't going to be another punch in the face. We wanted it to kind of feel like it started at that point, but went in a more potentially experimental direction.

The way The Lovers began is I had written a kind of poem, I guess, and what it was about was the inevitability of addiction or seduction, where one could try to resist, but you're going to wind up succumbing.

And the setting was a visual one of New Orleans. A place I lived for many years, hot summer, nighttime, gas lamp burning, 100 degrees, two in the morning, humid, earthy, and I know that feeling well.

I also know the feeling of being a full-fledged addict living in New Orleans in the summer, and not wanting to do something but unable to stop myself.

So that was where The lyrics took place, and that would end up being the verses.

I had these words for the verse, which was the denial phase, and the chorus was going to be the release and succumbing to whatever it is.

I had a blueprint of the shape of the song, but I had no idea what was going to sound like.

I'm Atticus Ross, where we originally started was bringing to life a score for this thing that's come out of trend's head.

...