“The Collector” by Nine Inch Nails
“The Collector” is a song that originally came out on 3 May 2005 as part of “With Teeth”, which Nine Inch Nail fans would recognize as the title of the band’s fourth studio album. The labels behind this track are Interscope in conjunction with the short-lived Nothing Records, the latter of which was co-founded by NIИ frontman Trent Reznor.
It was also Reznor who wrote and co-produced this track (with it being known as one of his personal favorites), and its other producer is Alan Moulder, who has been rolling with the Nine Inch Nails pretty much throughout their entire discography.
The Lyrics of “The Collector”
The simplest way of making sense out of this piece, underneath all of the poetic metaphors and what have you, is as the vocalist depicting himself as a very emotional, and one may even say tolerant person. What it is he actually ‘collects’, according to the lyrics, is feelings.
Or put otherwise, Trent is portraying the type of individual who if you were to offend him for instance, he takes such things to heart and doesn’t tend to forget. And as implied in the second verse, who is addressing is someone(s) who does apparently have the tendency to disrespect him quite often.
So whereas the narrator is obviously suffering, concurrently he touts himself as “a good boy”, a term seemingly alluding to the notion he’s not privy to defend himself from such emotional onslaughts. But that is not to say that Trent is coming off as a glutton for punishment. Rather, going back to the first verse, it’s more or less as if he is rather putting the onus on the addressee rather to treat him well.
Or let’s conclude by saying that we all know people with the type of personality being presented here, i.e. someone who is long-suffering from an interpersonal perspective, even to their own chagrin. So it isn’t as if the vocalist is lamenting having such a character. Instead, he is letting those he deals with know that this is in fact the case.
