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"March Of The Pigs" is the fourth track on 1994's The Downward Spiral. It has one of the most unusual metres of any song to enjoy popular radio play, alternating three measures of 7/8 time with one measure of 4/4 time in the verses (in effect, a 29/8 time signature). The chorus is in the common 4/4 time signature. As a result, with eighth notes getting the count, the song has a BPM rate of 269.
The chorus of this song shares its chord progression with the bridge of "Wish." The piano melody that closes out each chorus was originally a placeholder idea that Trent Reznor intended to go back and improve later on, but ultimately left it as is.
Lyrically, the song could be about society or NIN's fans, but Trent Reznor has stated in the interview bootleg titled Disturbed that the "pigs" in this song refer mainly to "anywhere from the media to people he thought were friends around him." Furthermore, he said, "The issue I was addressing was… when we attained a certain level of success, it was surprising to see the legion of people starting to fuck with you, can't wait to see you fail, hoping that you'll fuck up, ripping you off, trying to use you… The fact that American media, in 'underground world,' you go from being the darling to 'well, we accidentally started selling some records,' so they have to turn their backs on us." He also occasionally referred to fans as 'pigs' at live performances.
According to the Filter biography on their official website, former live guitarist Richard Patrick reportedly received the nickname "Piggy" while in Nine Inch Nails. According to Patrick's Filter bandmate Brian Liesegang, Reznor was very upset when Patrick left the band and wrote the song "Piggy" about it shortly thereafter. Patrick gave the story behind his nickname in a 2013 interview: "One evening the day before some studio time with Trent I took a girlfriend to a Skinny Puppy gig. I was watching the sound check and Ogre was on the mic shouting "WHITE PIGGY" over and over, I found it really funny. When I got back to the studio and we were setting up, I keep doing an impersonation of Ogre and after a few minutes Trent shouted to me "Hey Piggy, shut up and play some chords man!", and the name stuck after that."
As well, "Piggies" is a song on The Beatles' 1968 self-titled (or 'white') album, a noted influence on Charles Manson, who scrawled the word "pig" in blood on the front door of the Sharon Tate mansion wherein he and his 'Family' killed Tate and several others on August 8, 1969. The mansion was also where Reznor recorded The Downward Spiral in 1993-4 and Reznor kept the Tate door when he moved to Nothing Studios in New Orleans. However, Reznor debunked rumors of song connections to the Tate murders in an interview:
"I had "Piggy" written long before it was ever known that I would be in that house. "March of the Pigs" has nothing to do with the Tate murders or anything like that, I’m not going to say what it is about, but it’s not about that. Yeah, the name of the studio being "Pig", that was a definite bad taste joke. It was written on the front door at one time, I’ll admit to that."
Like much of the album, this song is structured around contrast: the loud and fast, oddly-metered and screamed verses are juxtaposed with the moodier, quieter bridge and piano-led chorus. It also samples buried screams from the films Sorcerer and The Exorcist II: The Heretic.
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