recognition

Forget the Rock Hall, Trent Reznor Just Got Himself a CMA Award

Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Yes, you read the headline correctly. Not the VMAs. Not the AMAs. Get your letters straight. We’re pleased to inform you that Trent Reznor, of very spooky Nine Inch Nails fame, has won a CMA Award for his contributions to the genre in 2019. And no, it’s not because he added a tasteful fiddle arrangement to “Head in a Hole” when you weren’t looking. Per Pitchfork, Reznor and his frequent creative partner, Atticus Ross, received the Musical Event of the Year honors due to their production credit on Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’s certified smash “Old Town Road (Remix),” which beat out tunes by Maren Morris, Brooks & Dunn, Garth Brooks, and Blake Shelton to win the the coveted category. “Old Town Road” prominently samples the banjo vignette of the 2008 Nine Inch Nails track “34 Ghosts IV,” which was co-written by Reznor and Ross. Last month, Reznor finally commented on the sample being used (originally without his knowledge), saying it was “undeniably hooky” and that the song had “been stuck in my head enough.” We’ll yeehaw to that!

Forget the Rock Hall, Trent Reznor Just Got a CMA Award