Wiki
-
Length
3:40
"Wish" is the second track on 1992's Broken EP, and displays that era's characteristic aggression and abrasive guitar attack. The song won a Grammy Award for "Best Metal Performance." It keeps with the general mood of the Broken EP and includes numerous angry and self-deprecating lyrical passages, but unlike other songs, also shows a desire for something more.
"Echoplex" features similar wind synthesizer sounds, but they do not appear to be direct samples from "Wish". As well, the bridge of "Wish" shares its chord progression with the chorus of "March Of The Pigs".
This is the original album version. Opening with percussion and noise loops, Reznor's quick verses work in call-and-response with an equally quick distorted guitar attack. Each verse eventually opens up into a sustained chorus based around guitar power chords. The synthesizer-driven bridge introduces a new chord progression (including whispers of the final two lines of lyrics) before returning to the verse guitar parts, a final chorus, and a coda made of the verse guitar parts again, which suddenly cut off to a quiet, ascending white noise manipulation that segues into "Last."
In 1992 the music video for "Wish" premiered. It was directed by Peter Christopherson, who also directed "March Of The Pigs" and the infamous Broken Movie. Oddly enough, "Wish" bears a strong resemblance to the video for "Rock You Like A Hurricane" by The Scorpions.
The video features the band (Reznor, Richard Patrick, James Woolley and Chris Vrenna) performing in a rather ornate cage. Outside of the cage is a mob that seems determined to get into the cage and attack the band. The finale of the video shows the mob accosting the band through the bars, grabbing at them and attempting to bind them. Ultimately, they break through the chain keeping the band locked inside and storm in, wielding baseball bats and other crude weapons. MTV felt that the ending scene was too violent and alternate footage was used for network airplay. The video can also be found on the Broken Movie. The only major difference is that footage from the movie can be seen during the video's interlude.
A second video is a live video filmed by Simon Maxwell. The footage used for this (as well as the live videos for "Eraser" and "Hurt") was shot in Dallas, Texas and Omaha, Nebraska in February of 1995. The footage is different from that used in the Closure performance.
Track descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
