Wiki
-
Length
4:15
"Sin" is the seventh track on the 1989 release Pretty Hate Machine. Remixes were featured on the Sin single along with a B-side (a cover of Queen's "Get Down, Make Love"). The song is often amped up when played live, usually featured at the beginning of setlists.
The "sha" samples used at the beginning and end of the song appear to be from "Paid In Full" by
Eric B. & Rakim, though they may also have sampled the same original source. The line "Stale incense, old sweat, and lies, lies, lies" is a direct quote of Clive Barker from his short story "In the Hills, the Cities" from Books Of Blood, in which he uses it to describe old European churches.
The loud cry from the end of "Kinda I Want To" segues into the track as the hisses jump back and forth between the left and right audio channels, stereo panning being a prominent feature of the track. The song itself is very beat driven with much synthesized layering and uses the lyrics as the melody for most of the song, lacking any real "lead" parts. It's also notable for its unique sample of a loud whistling, which is most likely a sped up sample of a saxophone. All remixes of Sin are remixes of a demo that was never released.
A music video was made, using the "Short" remix of the song. It was directed by Brett Turnbull. The video contains two women dancing with each other at the beginning before cutting to the main focus of the video. A woman, nude except for what looks like straps to spelunking gear and a halogen lamp, walking a shirtless, wrist-bound Reznor with a bag over his head through what looks like an industrial warehouse complex. He is then strapped into an aerotrim where she spins him throughout the remainder of the video. These scenes are intercut with two young gay lovers, a man and woman wearing ritualistic dressings and dancing, as well as visuals of pierced genitalia (both male and female), all reflecting the song's dark, sexual aspects.
The video was filmed in December 1990 in London, during a short trip by Reznor and John Malm to prepare for the upcoming UK releases and tour through Island Records.
The video was banned from MTV and most major outlets. It remained unreleased in any official capacity until a partial version of the video was included on Closure. There were reports that the complete video was shown at dance clubs in the early 1990s and can now be found on the internet, as the full video became available through TVT's website.
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.
