Trent Reznor

Trent Reznor led two distinctly different (but both extremely successful) musical lives, one as the man behind industrial-rock juggernaut Nine Inch Nails and another as a composer of film music. He was born on May 17, 1965 in New Castle, Pennsylvania, he learned piano as a child and later played sax and tuba in school. He began playing in bands while still in high school and quit college to concentrate on music, relocating to Cleveland in the process. He played with a number of bands and eventually got a job at a recording studio, where he had the opportunity to work on demos for what would become the first Nine Inch Nails songs. He signed to TVT Records and released the first NIN album, Pretty Hate Machine, in 1989, charting low but earning Gold status. Likely aided by Reznor's appearances on the first Lollapalooza tour in 1991, the next album, 1994's The Downward Spiral, became a blockbuster. Eventually achieving quadruple Platinum status and spawning the hit "Closer," it broke Nine Inch Nails through to the mainstream and made Reznor an alternative rock icon. That same year, Reznor made his first forays into Hollywood, working on the music for the hit film "Natural Born Killers." 1999's The Fragile proved to be similarly successful, reaffirming Reznor's continuing rock-star status. Thereafter, he would switch back and forth between film projects and Nine Inch Nails. Though the next couple of Nine Inch Nails albums were successful, Reznor went indie with 2008's Ghosts I-IV, starting his own label, The Null Corporation. 2009 marked the debut EP of How To Destroy Angels, the group Reznor formed with his vocalist wife Mariqueen Maandig, Atticus Ross, and Rob Sheridan. They released an album, Welcome Oblivion, in 2013. Nine Inch Nails returned to the major label world that same year with Hesitation Marks. The follow-up, Bad Witch, arrived five years later.