"My very first song was "Down In It." At the time, I was really into Ministry and Skinny Puppy - in fact Skinny Puppy's "Dig It" was the impetus for "Down In It," I'm not ashamed to admit." - Trent Reznor[4]
Initially released only on vinyl, a CD version of the single was later created following the album's success. The first track on the single edition, "Down in It (Skin)", is the mix found on Pretty Hate Machine. The cover art is very similar to Joy Division's first album, Unknown Pleasures, with Joy Division always being cited as an influence by Reznor, and Nine Inch Nails later covered the Joy Division song "Dead Souls" on the soundtrack to the 1994 film The Crow.
Promotion
Around the time of the single's release, the band lip-synced a performance of the song on the dance music show Dance Party USA.[6] Originally thought to be lost, the footage was rediscovered in 2012 and went viral after being uploaded to YouTube. Reznor responded to the video on his Twitter account, saying the band said they'd be interested in appearing on the show "as a joke" because it seemed like "the most absurd choice they could come up with at the time", but were surprised when they were actually booked to play.[6]
A music video for "Down in It", filmed on location in the Warehouse District of Chicago, was released in September 1989. It was produced by Jim Deloye and directed by Eric Zimmerman and Benjamin Stokes for H-Gun Productions.[10] Special effects were applied to scenes such as a television set falling forwards and backwards, writing in lights, and strobe flashing. In the video, Reznor runs to the top of a building while Chris Vrenna and Richard Patrick follow him. The original version of the music video ended with the implication that Reznor's character had fallen or jumped off the building, and he was seen lying on the ground with a deathly pallor created by applying starch powder to his face.[11][12]MTV edited the scene out of all airings.[13] To film the video's ending, Zimmerman and Stokes used a camera tied to a balloon, with ropes attached to prevent it from flying away. Minutes after they started filming, the ropes snapped and the balloons and camera floated away; eventually landing in a cornfield in Michigan.[11] The farmer whose property it landed on handed it to the FBI, who began investigating whether the footage was a snuff film portraying a murder or suicide.[14][15][16] The FBI identified Reznor,[17] who later remarked, "Somebody at the FBI had been watching too much Hitchcock or David Lynch or something."[18]
Police distributed flyers asking for leads and were contacted by an art student who worked for H-Gun and recognised the image from the video.[11][14][19] Having established Reznor was alive and well, in September 1990, the Chicago Police Department told reporters, "The bottom line is we don't have a body and we don't have mystery or homicide."[11] The television news magazine show Hard Copy covered the story on their March 3, 1991, episode,[15] which Reznor called, "Total junk gossip exploitative journalism. That was the icing on the cake: getting on the worst TV show in America."[18] Despite the sensationalist tone of the report, which likened "Down In It" video footage to a "satanic ritual" of "cult-like murder," the band's label used the controversy as a promotional tool, with clips from the Hard Copy interview included on an Island Records press kit for the UK release of Pretty Hate Machine.[20] Some British music journalists then questioned whether the whole incident had been engineered as a publicity stunt, but Reznor insisted that was not the case, telling Melody Maker: "I swear to God that was accidental - it sounds like the greatest publicity scam, but it wasn't; the whole story's been distorted. ... It's stupid, but true."[12]
At least two versions of the music video exist - one around 3:50 in length using the "Skin" remix also found on the Pretty Hate Machine album[21] and a longer 6:58 edit using the "Shred" remix.[10]
Critical reception
At the time of release, Billboard described the 12-inch single as an "Aggressive midtempo technonumber with an industrial edge that is easily accessible."[22] The single edition of the song was largely panned by AllMusic reviewer Christian Huey, who described the two remixes included as inferior to the original. Since all three tracks were later released on the "Head Like a Hole" single, he labeled the "Down in It" single as "completely superfluous and useful only to NIN completists."[23]
Describing the 6:58 version of the music video in a Billboard review segment for "club-oriented artists", Bill Coleman said, "Hard, funky techno number drives even harder with an appropriate clip that rams the point home with fast editing of potent industrial scenes and images,"[10] later simply calling it a "fab video."[24]
A "Down in It" remix was used in an early 1990s Gatoradetelevisionadvertisement.[27] Originally, "Steppin' Out" by Joe Jackson was to be featured in the commercial, but Jackson declined the offer. Reznor unsuccessfully sued the production company that created the commercial for copyright infringement after he saw it in 1993, accusing them of illegal use of the song without permission.[28]
↑Weisbard, Eric (February 1996). "Sympathy for the Devil". Spin. New York. p.38.
↑Coleman, Bill (10 June 1989). "Dance Trax"(PDF). Billboard. Vol.101, no.23. New York: P-MRC. p.27. ProQuest1438690197. Trent Reznor, aka Nine Inch Nails, has just completed his first release for TVT Records. "Down In It" is the first 12-inch, co-produced by Reznor, Keith LeBlanc and Adrian Sherwood. Reznor has also been co-producing tracks with Flood (Book of Love, Erasure, Cabaret Voltaire).
12Mico, Ted (31 August 1991). "NINE INCH NAILS: BRISTLE WHILE YOU WORK". Melody Maker. London: IPC Media. p.42. Retrieved 10 November 2025. We filmed the video for 'Down In It' at the end of '89 and the theme of the video was suicide – I was pursued through this building and finally jumped off the roof.
↑Carey, Jean (19 January 1990). "Sound Bites". St. Petersburg Times. Florida: Times Publishing Co. p.17. ProQuest262717500. Reznor apparently likes Dig It so much that he decided to include the song on his album. Problem is, Reznor has changed the title of the song to Down In It and fails to credit the members of Skinny Puppy as the tune's authors. Yes, the ripoff really is that blatant.
↑Nine Inch Nails performance from Ein Abend In Wien[nl] plus interview with Trent Reznor (radio broadcast) (in Dutch and English). Rotterdam: VPRO. September 1991. Transcript via NINhotline ("The Holland Interviews). The original version I did was about half speed of the one on the record and it was a total rip-off of "Dig It" by Skinny Puppy. I'll admit to that now.
↑"Trent Reznor post on Prodigy". www.theninhotline.com. November 8, 1992. Retrieved 2026-04-06. NO, that is not me in that Gatorade commercial. (We are investigating legal recourse.)
