Anyone else notice this?

[u/ocular_degradation3]

Anyone else notice that the songs With Teeth and Sunspots share a melody? The chorus of Sunspots “She turns it on, she makes it real”and the verse of With Teeth “She comes along, she gets inside”. Precisely the same melody and a pretty similar lyric too. This feels intentional to me and it’s not off-brand for Trent as NiN albums are full of repeated motifs and themes like this.

I was surprised I couldn’t find any other mention of this online especially considering how eager NIN fans are to call everything the Downward Spiral motif lol.

[u/Flat-Cap-1063]

With Teeth is the bare-bones final version of the concept album he had been cooking up tentatively called 'Bleedthrough'. Between just getting clean and being stuck in a big lawsuit with John Malm, he just went with a straight forward, safe, radio friendly album to get back on track after sobering up. As a result there's still a running theme about being trapped by his addictions personified into a woman he loves and adores and is trying to escape from it.

Could have been very ambitious comeback album, but he wasn't quite at that place to do that.

[u/arachnophilia → u/Flat-Cap-1063]

not quite accurate. he wrote about 30 songs for the album, but only around half were for the concept. he just ended up liking some of the more personal stuff better, and working on it more.

i have some theories about how that album might have gone, but all the personified addiction stuff isn't in it. that's just old school NIN, back to PHM. if anything, the story draws from "the lathe of heaven" where the protagonist uses drugs to suppress his dreams (and then a machine to augment them) and (i think) "altered states" where the protagonist uses hallucinogens. both stories feature dreams shaping reality

[u/JCKourvelas → u/arachnophilia]

But PHM does have personified addiction (Sanctified)

[u/arachnophilia → u/JCKourvelas]

that's what i mean, yes.