Ask Trent Reznor a question, and he’ll answer it with such candor and honesty that you’ll soon be angling to talk to him for hours on end. In fact, we have! And he let us! But in his latest arsenal of topics he’d like to discuss, he was asked by the New York Times Magazine if he felt modern musicians have a responsibility to address politics, especially in this murky Trumpian era. They absolutely should, he reckons, with the most egregious example being none other than one of the most prominent pop (country?) stars in the world. “You don’t hear a lot from the Taylor Swifts of the world, and top-tier, needle-moving cultural youth, because they are concerned about their brand, their demographic and their success and career and whatnot,†Reznor explained. “I was doing press with somebody in the mid-90s, and they made an argument that stayed with me: that I have influence, and that it’s my job to call out whatever needs to be called out, because there are people who feel the same way but need someone to articulate it.â€
If it wasn’t clear already, Reznor is as anti-Trump as they come, saying how the administration’s “disregard for decency and truth and civility†has turned us into a country that “celebrates stupidity.â€