The Fragile is the third studio album by the American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released as a double album by Nothing Records and Interscope Records on September 21, 1999. It was produced by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and the English producer Alan Moulder, a longtime Reznor collaborator. It was recorded throughout 1997 to 1999 in New Orleans.
Looking to depart from the distorted production of their previous album, The Downward Spiral (1994), the album features elements of ambient and electronic music within a wide variety of genres. The album continues some of the lyrical themes from The Downward Spiral, including depression and drug abuse. The album notably contains more instrumental sections than their previous work, with some entire tracks being instrumentals. The Fragile is also one of the band's longest studio releases, clocking in at nearly 1 hour and 45 minutes long. The record was promoted with three singles: "The Day the World Went Away", "We're in This Together", and "Into the Void", as well as the promotional single "Starfuckers, Inc." and an accompanying tour, the Fragility Tour, which spanned two legs. Several accompanying recordings were also released, including a remix album, Things Falling Apart (2000), a live album, And All That Could Have Been (2002), as well as an alternate version of the record, The Fragile: Deviations 1 (2016).
Upon release, critics applauded the album's ambition and composition, although some criticized its length and perceived lack of lyrical substance. However, in the years following its release, it has come to be regarded by many critics and listeners to be among the band's best work. The album debuted at number one in the U.S. to become the band's first chart-topper, and was eventually certified double platinum by the RIAA.
The Fragile is a good album by industrial band Nine Inch Nails. The album has a lot of dynamical changes within the tracks and they vary between aggressive and fragile. As such it follows the idea of the previous album The Downward Spiral. Compared to that album more elements of ambient and electronic music appear. The Fragile is not as good as The Downward Spiral. The quality of the first four tracks of that record is not nearly matched and "The Great Below" is great, but not as marvelous as "Hurt". In the end the record is a bit too long and gets weaker during the second ("right") disc. Still it's a solid four stars.
Rating: 9/10
Best songs: Somewhat damaged, The day the world went away, The wretched, We’re in this together, Into the void, Where is everybody, Please
The first two NIN albums were huge during my college radio days, I don't recall ever hearing much of this one in its day. This all seemed musically solid, had a meaningful arc to my ears, and pretty much held my attention throughout which is a decent trick for any double album. Industrial is not really my thing, suffering as it does from that Forever Darkness issue. I read more about Trent Reznor when I was looking into this than I have throughout the rest of my life and found it hilarious to learn (in the context of his chosen genre) that he is in an apperently super stable long term marriage with 5 or 6 kids (weirdly hard to pin that number down). Well played.
As I listened to this I became more impressed at Nine Inch Nails. I already liked their music a lot… but the epic length of this had me thinking about how they move out of rock music to something more in albums like these. Great stuff!
Trent Reznor is a madman. This was a huge album and full of his trademark industrial gothic sound. I personally like his radio stuff a little better but this is a real top notch album to sink some teeth into.
I liked this more than the other NIN album, but by god it didn't need to be this long. It gets exhausting near the end.
My personal rating: 3/5
My rating relative to the list: 3/5
Should this have been included on the original list? No.
It's alright, but I really don't need an hour and 43 minutes of Nine Inch Nails. Is it weird that his vocals remind me of Lenny Kravitz? 2.5 stars, rounding to 3.
I listened to the first “CD” / “side” (what do we call it these days??) and that was enough.
I don’t need two hours of anything to know whether I like it or not.
It was ok.
Read more on Wikipedia