Album: American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002)

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• I hurt myself today
  To see if I still feel
  I focus on the pain
  The only thing that's real
  
  The needle tears a hole
  The old familiar sting
  Try to kill it all away
  But I remember everything
  
  What have I become
  My sweetest friend?
  Everyone I know
  Goes away in the end
  
  And you could have it all
  My empire of dirt
  I will let you down
  I will make you hurt
  
  I wear this crown of thorns
  Upon my liar's chair
  Full of broken thoughts
  I cannot repair
  
  Beneath the stains of time
  The feelings disappear
  You are someone else
  I am still right here
  
  What have I become
  My sweetest friend?
  Everyone I know
  Goes away in the end
  
  And you could have it all
  My empire of dirt
  I will let you down
  I will make you hurt
  
  If I could start again
  A million miles away
  I will keep myself
  I would find a way Writer/s: Trent Reznor
  Publisher: CONCORD MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
  Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 1

• M Ryan from UsaNo comments yet? I've followed this song since it was first released. Rick Rubin asked Trent if he could try it with Johnny Cash. Trent says sure. When Trent got a copy of the CD from Rick his initial reaction was that didn't like what he heard. "I'd known where I was when I wrote it. I know what I was thinking about. I know how I felt. Hearing it was like someone kissing your girlfriend. It felt invasive." However after seeing the video Trent said "Having Johnny Cash, one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, want to cover your song, that's something that matters to me. It's not so much what other people think but the fact that this guy felt that it was worthy of interpreting". He said afterwards "it was a song that sounds like one he would have written in the '60s and that's wonderful." The cover was released to critical acclaim and became a Johnny Cash song.. "That song isn't mine anymore," said Reznor.

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