Everything Hurts [Intro – prepared piano, isolated metallic strikes] I'm an artist. [tape rewinds] Sounds pretentious. [short crackle from an old amplifier] I'm keeping it. [Verse 1 – dry piano + bowed double bass] Beethoven had silence. [piano cuts out abruptly, leaving only room noise] Cobain had distortion. [a single dirty guitar chord crashes in too loud, then disappears] Reznor dug into sound until the sound dug back. [metallic found-object percussion, uneven pulse] I have a laboratory that's open all night. I take a song apart into words, tension, breath and dirt. [the singer's breathing becomes part of the rhythm] I push the boundary. See what breaks. [cello string slowly bends downward] Nothing. Bit disappointing. [sudden prepared-piano KLANG] Again. [Pre-Chorus – string pizzicato + irregular rim clicks] "They say it's already good." [all instruments STOP] I know. [whisper from the left] That's the problem. [Chorus – full band, dirty guitar + piano + cello + heavy drums] I'm an artist. Everything hurts. One wrong word. [one piano note deliberately lands a semitone off] One sound that's just too pretty. [perfectly clean chord → instantly swallowed by distortion] A chorus that says almost exactly what I meant. [the entire band cuts out] Almost. ["almost" repeats in chopped, increasingly distorted vocal layers] almost… almost… al-most… al— [bass hit] The most offensive word in my vocabulary. I'm an artist. Everything hurts. [pause] Again. [tape rewind → chorus tries to restart, then gets brutally cut off] [Verse 2 – bass + marimba + piano-key percussion without sounding the notes] I'm not looking for a song. I'm conducting auditions. [individual instruments answer each question] Does the bass understand the lyrics? [double bass: short reply] Does the guitar know why it's here? [guitar responds with absurdly long feedback] I didn't ask for your life story. Is the vocal trying to sound prettier than what it's saying? [vocal blooms into an excessively beautiful choral harmony] Suspicious. [CLICK – choir disappears] Delete it. [metallic industrial rhythm slams in] Add noise. Too much. [immediately quieter] Undo. Too little. [everything returns twice as loud] No. Not like that. [silence] Perfectionism is a very elegant word for refusing to finish anything. [Chorus – heavier rhythm, strings playing aggressive short figures] I'm an artist. Everything hurts. Meaning without sound is unfinished. [instruments vanish, voice alone] Sound without meaning is emptiness with excellent styling. [orchestra performs an absurdly monumental chord] Exactly. [chord dies immediately] I want both. At once. Precisely. Unfortunately. [Bridge – sonic laboratory] [time signature shifts] I experiment. [marimba + prepared piano] Meaning I make mistakes methodically. [baritone sax enters with one low note] Change the tempo. [tempo slows] Not that much. [sudden acceleration] Nope. [cello col legno + wooden knocks] More dirt. [distorted bass] Less guitar. [guitar defiantly plays one more chord] I said less. [guitar disappears] Thank you. [strange analog synth begins drifting in pitch] What's that? [synth becomes even stranger] ... Keep it. [Breakdown – sub-bass pulse + breathing only] They say, "AI gives you finished music." [short digital glitch] No. [instruments enter one by one: piano → cello → guitar → marimba → saxophone → metallic percussion] AI gives me possibilities. I turn them into... [all instruments collide in controlled chaos] ...a decision problem. [SUDDEN SILENCE] [Final Chorus – voice alone at first, instruments entering line by line] I'm an artist. [piano] Everything hurts. [cello] One syllable in the wrong place is enough. [guitar] I want every word to have the right weight. [bass + drums] I want every sound to know why it's there. [full instrumentation, no chaos – all previous experiments lock into one coherent rhythm] And after the final note I want exactly what I meant to leave behind. Not pretty. [clean chord] Not good. [chord drifts slightly out of tune] Right. [everything cuts out, leaving a single piano] Done. No. Now I know what needs changing. Again. No. Undo that. ... Yes. Don't touch it.
