Nine Inch Nails have received a huge spike in streams on YouTube after their music was featured in a new episode of Black Mirror.
In the episode ‘Rachel, Jack And Ashley Too’, Miley Cyrus plays a fictional pop star called Ashley O. The songs she performs in the show are all upbeat reworkings of the rock band’s material, including ‘On A Roll’ – a pop take on ‘Head Like A Hole’.
Since the episode premiered on Netflix earlier this month (June 5), ‘Head Like A Hole’ has seen an average increase of 40,000 views per day on YouTube. Those numbers equate to a 300 percent spike from the average daily views it received in 2018.
Last week (June 7), Cyrus promised that a full version of her reworking of the ‘Pretty Hate Machine’ track is on the way. One fan took to Twitter to ask the pop star to “actually release Ashley O’s song in black mirror”, to which the singer replied: “Don’t worry SHE IS COMING!”
During a recent press event, Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker explained that he had to seek permission from NIN frontman Trent Reznor to transform the tracks. He wanted to see the script and I got to rewrite his lyrics in a chirpy way,” Brooker said. “I’m not the best lyricist in the world, and there’s one point where she’s singing ‘I’m stoked on ambition and verve’ instead of ‘You’re gonna get what you deserve’.”
In a review of the Cyrus-featuring episode, NME said: “The trick of this particular episode is to shine a light on things that are already happening in the pop world and present them as science fiction then, within that, to package it all – the ethical issues, the sheer human nastiness – as a laugh-filled romptastic caper movie.”