Nine Inch Nails songs are great because this one guy wrote them as his fucked-up, specific meditations on personal despair but still came up with some stuff that applies to everyone sometimes. That’s the feeling that I get, anyway, when I watch a bunch of adorable little kids tear into NIN’s head-crushing 1992 industrial banger “Wish.”
“Wish” is an intense song. On multiple occasions, I’ve seen Dillinger Escape Plan cover “Wish” and turn clubs into bedlam. But “Wish” is also catchy as all hell, and it’s built on a universal feeling — a loathing of the self and also of you. O’Keefe Music Foundation, an Ohio-based nonprofit for young musicians, recently posted a video of some of their kids playing “Wish,” and it’s starting to go viral because it is so damn cute.
The O’Keefe Music Foundation’s video for their “Wish” cover starts out with a little kid who’s bored at her own birthday party and who wishes for something more exciting. We then see what she’s picturing: A room full of little kids jumping around while slightly-older musicians play the music and the girl herself delivers the lyrics in a pretty impressive growl. A few of the Kidz Bop-style lyrical changes are pretty funny, or maybe I’m remembering it wrong and Trent Reznor really was singing about a bad-luck fist-bump. There’s really no way to know for certain. The video brings a slight feeling of parents convincing their kids to do this, but cute is cute. Watch it below.
