The Mystery Of Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Blue Sunday’ Uncovered
Would you pay £195 for a pile of dirt that’s littered with blue specks? If you’re a hardcore Nine Inch Nails fan or completest collector of NIN merchandise, the chances are you probably tried to purchase this product.
In the past few weeks, a new object appeared completely out of the blue on the Nine Inch Nails official web store, which was branded by some as “elaborate merch” that ties in with the recent Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross ‘Watchmen’ series soundtrack. Over on the NIN store you can find a product called ‘Blue Sunday’, with a description that says it was “salvaged directly from the voided foundation” from a castle in Wales. The product also specifies three benefits that come from the soil: one being a chakra re-harmonisation; the second telling buyers that it apparently “lifts moods” and “relieves stress”; and lastly, it tells buyers that it gives them “healthier skin and a firmer stool”. That last point makes me question whether the product is edible or not.
This new release has seemingly stumped people, but it does appear incredibly alien when you look at it as it looks like a prop pulled straight out of a sci-fi movie or TV show, which is precisely what the new ‘Watchmen’ TV show is: a televised adaptation of the DC Comics ‘Watchmen’ comic series. The soundtrack for the show was of course orchestrated by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and English musician Atticus Ross. And this isn’t their first outing with soundtrack duties either, as the pair have previously won an award for their 2010 soundtrack for ‘The Social Network’ film, and did the soundtrack for the social media phenomenon ‘Bird Box’ too.
Alongside the blue dirt, the NIN store has advertised three individual volumes of the ‘Watchmen’ soundtrack on vinyl, which were all released on different days: the first on November 4th, the second on November 25th and the third on December 16th. Each soundtrack volume is available for £30; strangely however, a bundle of all three isn’t available, which is normally a go-to offer for artists when releasing multiple albums/discs under the same project. Users on Reddit, equally as confused as us, speculated that the ‘Blue Sunday’ product could just be a front for buying all three of the ‘Watchmen’ soundtrack volumes together. The ‘Blue Sunday’ dirt even lists three different benefits, which could in fact be a benefit from each volume of the soundtrack. The added bonus could be an exclusive 10 gram bag of dirt as advertised, and it would make the £195 price tag a little more justifiable.
But the mystery didn’t stop there either. Users on the NIN subreddit who were crazy enough to have purchased the ‘Blue Sunday’ product discovered that, when trying to buy the product, it displays a message:
Those lucky enough to have purchased ‘Blue Sunday’ via a store wishlist loophole also reported that they received mysterious phone calls. Somebody on the NIN subreddit with the username SquirtBox recorded the voicemail and posted to SoundCloud, which showed that the call was a pre-recorded voice saying that buyers were “in violation of attempted transport of A-class materials”, before saying that a notification would come in the mail and that somebody has been assigned to the case.
User SquirtBox then kept users updated on the purchase, saying that the order was cancelled and a full refund was given following the purchase, but it was still dispatched anyway. SquirtBox then uploaded an image of all three volumes of the ‘Watchmen’ soundtrack on vinyl, along with an image of the ‘Blue Sunday’ product, on December 24th 2019. The image showed that it came with a covering letter and certificate of authenticity. A user with the username dan_nim later posted a close up of the covering letter that came with ‘Blue Sunday’, with another user saying their payment was also refunded.
At first I was left wondering if NIN really took £195 from multiple fans for 10 mg of dirt with blue specks. Now taking into account the fact the product is currently unavailable and sold out, and that buyers were also refunded the money they paid, I feel like the ‘Blue Sunday’ mystery was either a clever marketing scheme or just a bit of fun tied to the new ‘Watchmen’ soundtrack. It’s also worth noting that this isn’t Trent’s first brush with outside-of-the-box music marketing — The 2007 NIN album release “Year Zero” was accompanied by a highly engaged Alternate Reality Game involving various cryptic websites, messages, mysterious USB drives found at concerts containing new music and embedded clues within the audio waveforms, phone-lines with mysterious recorded messages, and hundreds of fans trying to piece together all the various clues to work out what was happening. This ‘Blue Sunday’ mystery is some ways feels like a throwback to those times.
Either way, it really caused quite a stir and has no doubt drummed up a lot of interest surrounding the latest ‘Watchmen’/Reznor/Ross collab. Reznor has also stated in an interview with Rolling Stone that there is a possibility of a collaboration album in 2020, as well as going out on the road again. Which begs the question, is there going to be more ‘Blue Sunday’ dirt available at the merch stand?
