Song of the Day 12/5: Nine Inch Nails, “The Beginning of the End”

Could this be a message for Valerie Longhurst? You decide. It comes from Trent Reznor’s 2007 LP “Year Zero,” a concept album about an American dystopia. Reznor set his tale of a United States beset by terrorists and ruled by a Christofascist regime in 2022, 15 years in the future, because that was the year “Soylent Green” was set in.

Reznor was writing in the waning days of the Bush presidency, so a few details are off – our terrorists are gun nuts and Trumpaloons, not Muslims, and it’s tech companies, not the government, spying on us – but otherwise he’s looking prescient these days.