“Only” by Nine Inch Nails

"Only" was the second single from With Teeth, Nine Inch Nails' fourth studio album, and in 2005 it came as a curveball: Trent Reznor, the man behind all that grinding industrial noise, strutting over a groove you could actually dance to. It followed "The Hand That Feeds" and came ahead of "Every Day Is Exactly the Same".

Reznor wrote it alone and produced it with Alan Moulder, who also handled the mix, while Atticus Ross chipped in extra production. The tags people hang on it tell the story, industrial metal and synth-pop, dance-rock and dance-punk all at once, and that tension is the fun of it. The machinery still grinds away underneath, twitchy and cold, but up top the track struts and jabs like Reznor has finally loosened his collar.

It was a monster on alternative radio in America, holding number one on Billboard's Modern Rock chart for seven weeks, and it also topped the UK Rock & Metal chart. In Britain it climbed to 20, which made it the band's second most successful release there.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.