Songs Like Hurt by Nine Inch Nails
By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-09-05
The Nine Inch Nails original of Hurt measures 28 for intensity and, far more tellingly, only 4 for dynamic range. It moves at 90 BPM, layered, soft-voiced, with mild shifts. Mood tags: emotional, introspective, melancholy.
The dynamic range is the whole signature
A 4 is narrow. It means the recording stays within a tight loudness band almost throughout — it does not swell and it does not drop away. For a song this emotionally extreme, that flatness is the point: the restraint is doing the work. It is also the hardest property to match. Most of the songs closest to Hurt on intensity and mood have a wider range than it does, so they breathe more than the seed. That is worth knowing before you queue them.
The closest on the signature itself
The Ultracheese by Arctic Monkeys is the only match here that also reads dynamic range 4 — intensity 26, 72 BPM, mild changes. On the dimension that defines Hurt, it is the nearest thing we have.
Close on intensity and mood, wider in range
- Pretty When You Cry — Lana Del Rey. Intensity 28, dynamic range 5, 110 BPM.
- Champagne Problems — Taylor Swift. Intensity 27, dynamic range 5, 68 BPM.
- Love is a Losing Game — Amy Winehouse. Intensity 25, dynamic range 6, 60 BPM.
- The Thrill Is Gone — B.B. King. Intensity 28, dynamic range 7, 90 BPM — same intensity and tempo, far wider swing.
- If I Were a Boy — Beyoncé. Intensity 28, dynamic range 7, 92 BPM.
If you came here because of the Johnny Cash version rather than this one, that is a different recording with a different measured profile — the story of how it changed hands is in our guide to Hurt.
Hurt was written by Trent Reznor and released by Nine Inch Nails on The Downward Spiral (1994). Figures here describe the Nine Inch Nails recording. Figures are our own measurements, read from the public API at build time. The genre and era spread is a consequence of measuring sound rather than style — it is not a claim that these artists resemble each other in any other way. No lyrics are reproduced.