"It’s strange when you’re playing in front of 30 people, lip-syncing. Especially when you’re hanging upside down with a piece of meat behind you." How Nine Inch Nails' anthem of self-loathing and sleaze got twisted into the ultimate horny metal track

Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor 1994.

It was Mötley Crüe drummer and hard rock’s bozo-in-chief Tommy Lee, of all people, who nailed the enduring NSFW brilliance of Nine Inch Nails’ 1994 single Closer.

“Come on, dude: ‘I wanna fuck you like an animal’?” he enthused to US magazine Blender, referring to the song’s provocative lyrical hook. “That’s the all-time fuck song. Those are pure fuck beats – Trent Reznor knew what he was doing. You can fuck to it, you can dance to it and you can break shit to it.”