Head Like A Hole

Song Name: Head Like A Hole (cover song)

Artist:  DEVO

Appears On:

◦  Supercop Sampler

◦  “Head Like A Hole” (promo CD single)

◦  Supercop: Music From And Inspired By The Dimension Motion Picture

◦  Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology

Run Time:  4:52

Promos Released:  1995, 1996

Soundtrack Album Released:  1996

Writing Credits:  Trent Reznor

Sung By:  Mark Mothersbaugh (lead vox)

Trivia / Info:

◦  Produced by DEVO

◦  Engineered and mixed by Robert Casale

Lyrics:

(intro)

[vocalizations]

[God], [money!] I'll do anything for you

[God], [money!] Just tell me what you want me to

[God], [money!] Nail me up against the wall

[God], [money!] Don't want everything he wants it all

[No], You can't take it

[No], You can't take it

[No], You can't take that away from me

[No], You can't take it,

No, no you can't take it

[No], You can't take that away from me

[Head like a hole]

[Black as your soul]

[I'd rather die]

[Than give you control]

[Head like a hole]

[Black as your soul]

[I'd rather die]

[Than give you control]

[Bow down] Before the one you serve

You're going to get what you deserve

[Bow down] Before the one you serve

You're going to get what you deserve

[God], [money!] Not looking for the cure

[God], [money!] Not concerned about the sick among the pure

[God], [money!] Let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised

[God], [money!] Not one to choose

[No], You can't take it,

No, no you can't take it

[No], You can't take that away from me

[No], You can't take it,

No, no you can't take it

[No], You can't take that away from me

[Head like a hole]

[Black as your soul]

[I'd rather die]

[Than give you control]

[Head like a hole]

[Black as your soul]

[I'd rather die]

[Than give you control]

[Bow down] Before the one you serve

You're going to get what you deserve

[Bow down] Before the one you serve

You're going to get what you deserve

(synth solo)

[Head like a hole]

[Black as your soul]

[I'd rather die]

[Than give you control]

[Head like a hole]

[Black as your soul]

[I'd rather die]

[Than give you control]

[Head like a hole]

[Black as your soul]

[I'd rather die]

[Than give you control]

[Head like a hole]

[Black as your soul]

[I'd rather die]

[Than give you control]

[Bow down] Before the one you serve

You're going to get what you deserve

[Bow down] Before the one you serve

You're going to get what you deserve

[Bow down] Before the one you serve

You're going to get what you deserve

[Bow down] Before the one you serve

You're going to get what you deserve

[vocalizations]

(outro)

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Original Lyrics

God Money I'll do anything for you
God Money just tell me what you want me to
God Money nail me up against the wall
God Money don't want everything he wants it all
No you can't take it
No no you can't take it
(You can't take that away from me)

Head like a hole
Black as your soul
I'd rather die than give you control
Head like a hole
Black as your soul
I'd rather die than give you control

Bow down before the one you serve
You're going to get what you deserve

God Money's not looking for the cure
God Money's not concerned about the sick among the pure
God Money let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised
God Money's not one to choose
No you can't take it
No no you can't take it
No you can't take that away from me

Head like a hole
Black as your soul
I'd rather die than give you control
Head like a hole
Black as your soul
I'd rather die than give you control

Bow down before the one you serve
You're going to get what you deserve

Video:

Fan Video

“Devo NIN cover Head Like a Hole Left Minus Right Audio Channel Mix US Enclosure Company” uploaded to YouTube by David tHOMAS

“Devo - Head Like A Hole.avi” uploaded to YouTube by LastCallHall

“Devo - Head Like a Hole - Karaoke w. Lyrics – Caritas uploaded to YouTube by Caritas Goth Karaoke

“DEVO - Head Like A Hole (Slowed and Reverbed)” uploaded to YouTube by Will Thorton

Additional Info:

 Interscope Records wanted DEVO to do a cover song for the Supercop soundtrack album.

DEVO again chose to cover a song whose lyrics they agree with.

 The 1989 original written and performed by Reznor is similar to a 1987 commercial soundtrack by Mark.

DEVO’s film soundtrack release version was intended to sound like an original song that inspired NIN to cover it.

 A second, unreleased version was made after the completion deadline. It was intended to sound inspired by Nine Inch Nails.

 Some "Head Like A Hole" performances by NIN include Josh Freese on drums –

2006 concert video was released on Beside You In Time (2007).

Cover Song Reviews

 “Imagine my thrill when they were covering ‘Head Like a Hole.’ That thrill lasted right up to hearing the second bar!” – Trent Reznor (2005)

 “Get this cd just for DEVO's version of 'head like a hole'! (their song 'supercop' isn't bad either..when people request NIN at my club nights I will usually put this in instead.(they either really like it or really hate it.” – azrael racek (1999)

 “Their mock-robotic stabs at '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' and 'Are You Experienced?' were a great joke; it didn't work as well with 'Head Like a Hole' — in part because young alien types like Trent Reznor had already grown up knowing the truth about de-evolution.” – Douglas Wolk (2000)

 “...Because DEVO tends to place the emphasis on others’ stupidity rather than their own hurt feelings, they can sing 'Head Like A Hole' without sounding merely aggrieved.“ – Oliver Hall (2017)

 “I consider myself a strong-rooted spudboy and yet somehow I missed DEVO's fantastic 1996 cover of Nine Inch Nails' electronic industrial anthem ‘Head Like a Hole’.” – David Pescovitz (2021)

 “There's two ways to do a cover. One is to make a song that sounds as close to the original as possible, and the other is to make the song your own.” Anon. – (2021)

 “It would be better without vocals. The synth and drums are really solid.” – /u/ DanaScully_69 (2021)

 “The Booji Boy 'Money!' is the entirely most charming point of the song.” davejenk1ns – (2021)

 “OMG, m͜͡o͜͡n͜͡e͜͡y͜͡! I’m cracking up! Almost peed a little!” @MrsMixMusic – (2025)

 “I love it, but I’m horrified. I am obsessed with it, but my mind is melting. It’s not a straight cover, which is good and of course not this is Devo, it belongs on an 80s movie soundtrack, it’s nerds discovering heroin, and I’m having a moment of spiritual confusion right now which I’m inflicting on you:” – SupaJam (2023)

 “Always hated this cover.” – /u/GarionOrb (2024)

Links:

https://musicbrainz.org/recording/4993647e-92f8-4dfb-89ef-107e546bd6b5

https://www.allmusic.com/song/head-like-a-hole-mt0005501378

https://www.discogs.com/master/142831-Various-Supercop-Music-From-And-Inspired-By-The-Dimension-Motion-Picture

https://www.discogs.com/artist/12834-Devo?searchParam=%22Head+Like+A+Hole%22

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 SUBLIMINAL:

 O: What kind of commercials do you work on?

 MM: We do everything from regional to international spots. We were just asked to collaborate on some projects for McDonald's which would include doing in-store merchandising for them, creating albums' worth of music which would impart the message of Ronald McDonald and Barbie. Little do they know that it would be through the filter of Devo. Our subliminal messages would be fully intact and attached like antioxidants working their way into the system.

 O: What kind of subversion do you plan to unleash upon a nation of underage hamburger consumers and Barbie fans?

 MM: Well, in general, we've done for Hawaiian Punch, Toyota... I don't know, just about everybody: 7-Up, Hershey's, Nestle's. Nike. Fila. We have hundreds of clients. The one thing we found out early on was that you could insert subliminal messages into commercials without too much difficulty, without our clients being concerned about it or even noticing in most cases. A few times we even told them we did it, and they just laughed. They didn't care. It's strange.

 If it's something we kind of approve of as a product — certain computer products, for instance, or something that's healthy for people — we'll put in one kind of message. On something where it may be uninspired, sugar-coated crap, maybe we'll put in subliminal messages like, “Question Authority” or “Choose Your Mutations Carefully.” We even did “Sugar Is Bad For You” once. I think sometimes subliminal messages hold a lot of weight. - Mark (1997)

 "When I got into commercials, we were constantly packing in subliminal messages like 'Chose your mutations carefully, '"he confesses, "we'd play it back for our clients and I’d be sitting there, the song would be playing along, and there would be all these clients tapping their pens on the table. Then I hear 'Chose your mutations carefully’ and my engineer would look over at them and they're still tapping their pens, and he'd be like, 'Yeah, that’s great!’

 The only true way to effect change in our culture is through subversion. " Perhaps most amazing of all, no one ever caught on. “Nobody ever said anything,” adds Mothersbaugh, sounding a little disappointed. "Never once." - Mark (1998)

 “...We quote a Burger King commercial on our first album, a song called "Too Much Paranoias". Kinda interesting, cause in my life now it’s come full swing and now I work on commercials. When I first did it, I didn’t know how many I was gonna do, and I spent a lot of energy doing things like putting subliminal messages in.” - Mark (2003)

 At first, he had an uneasy relationship with commercial spots, unsure how to approach the notion of manipulating strangers into buying products that he didn’t feel particularly excited about. As an antidote, he and fellow Devo member Bob Casale in the beginning used to sneak subliminal messages into their scores. The first few times they were nervous, says Mothersbaugh.

 “I think it was a Keds commercial where we put in ‘Question authority.’ I remember the people from Keds were tapping their pens on the table and the music’s playing, and it gets to the subliminal message, and I remember I flushed bright red. I looked over at this guy and he’s going, ‘Yeah! Yeah! Go go go!’?”

 Eventually, though, that got too easy. “We’d push it until somebody would say, ‘Hey, did that just say, “Obey, submit”?’ and we’d go, ‘No.’ Then we’d take it out. Then we’d only do it every year or so if we got inspired, or if some product was less likeable than we wanted it to be. We still do it every once in a while.” - Mark (2007)

 They work on more than 100 ad campaigns a year, and Mothersbaugh confirms the rumours that he has inserted subliminal messages into many of the jingles.

 "For about six years, I put them in every single one," he says. "If the product was something I didn't care for, I'd make the message stronger. In a candy commercial I remember putting 'sugar is bad for you'. And I'd put things like 'question authority' and 'toil is stupid', and the old Devo phrases like 'are we not men?' and 'we must repeat' into these commercials for BMW and McDonald's and Coca-Cola. I only stopped doing it because it was too easy." - Mark (2008)

 [Q:] Devo seems to contain a critique of consumer culture, and yet you've gone on to score more than a hundred commercials, including some products, like "Hawaiian Punch," that you, yourself, think is just a lousy way of selling sugar to kids. How do you reconcile the two? Are there any products that you wouldn't sell?

 [A:] There have been products that I haven't sold and there have been products that repulsed me and I took the job because I enjoyed the subversion of putting subliminal messages into TV commercials. - Mark (2008)

 Mothersbaugh: Look, I came from a generation and a time when hippies and punks thought they could change the world. But what I found out was that really no one was listening. I started looking around at who really had the ability to change things and I found the answer was Madison Avenue. People in the advertising business are capable of changing peoples’ thought processes.

 They have been quite successful of convincing people to buy a lot of crap that they do not need. So I moved out to California 30-plus years ago and set up shop with an idea to use commercials to change mindsets. I started right away using subliminal messages in my music with my first commercial. It was for Hawaiian Punch. I mixed in the vocals “sugar is bad for you” over and over in the jingle. The producers didn’t hear it so it aired as-is with that message. - Mark (2010)

 Q. You play both sides of this game. You write a lot of music for TV commercials. You even used to slip in subliminal messages, right?

 A. I did do that early on, yes. I'd sneak in Devo catchphrases, like "Duty now for the future" and "Be like your ancestors or be different." If I didn't like the product, I'd put in "Sugar is bad for you" or "Question authority." It's easy to do. I lost interest after about 40 of them. It's funny, though, when you're unveiling these things in meetings, and you get to the part where you can barely hear "Choose your mutations carefully." I have to be careful not to blush.

 Q. Why did you stop?

 A. It's not necessary anymore. More people believe in our original concept of de-evolution than ever.

 - Mark (2010)

 What also surprised Mothersbaugh was that unlike record labels, commercial sponsors tended to leave him alone when he crafted music for such products as Hawaiian Punch. “Commercials are where you can really experiment with stuff, a lot of people don’t realize that,” he says. “Some audience members thought that the short films Devo made included subliminal messages like ‘Obey,’ which was funny because they didn’t. But what a great idea. So I did insert hidden audio messages like ‘question authority’ into commercials, and only once did an audio engineer catch it.” - Mark (2014)

 ‘I was doing a Hawaiian Punch commercial. It was my first commercial and I was kind of not sure how I felt about doing TV commercials, but I liked the idea of being in that arena. It needed a drumbeat and I put, "Choose your mutations carefully." [Imitates drumbeat.] Bum-buh-buh-bum, bum-buh-buh-bum. And Bob Casale was my longtime engineer and coproducer on all this stuff.

 I remember we were in a meeting with Daley and Associates, the ad agency that was representing the commercial. We played the song and in this room I'm hearing, "Choose your mutations carefully." I'm looking at a guy over there tapping his pen on the table and as soon as the commercial ends I turn bright red and Bob Casale looks at me like he wants to kill me, like we're going to be in so much trouble. And the guy is tapping his pen and as soon as this commercial ends he goes, "Yeah, Hawaiian Punch does hit you in all the right places!" He just shouts out the main line from the narrator at the very end. We just look at each other and I'm like, "It's that easy?" ’ - Mark (2016)

 ‘I look for samples that you can-- I like voices that you can hear, but you can’t hear. So I like it when it’s like-- I think my first one I ever did was a Hawaiian Punch commercial, was the first time I ever did this. And underneath a drum solo, I had it go, “Sugar is bad for you.” And... I just remember being at the ad agency, and the guy’s tapping his pen on the table, and I’m playing it for him, and Bob Casale’s looking at me. And I’m blushing when it happens, because I can’t... I’m not really good at that kind of stuff. So I turn bright red, and he’s looking at me like, “You’re-- we’re going to get fired.” And then the guy’s tapping his pen, and at the end of the commercial, the guys goes, “Yeah! Hawaiian Punch does hit you in all the right places!” And he just looked at me, like, “How did that happen?” ’ - Mark (2017)

 “In commercials I’d put subliminal messages. It was so easy to, in the middle of a Hawaiian Punch commercial, go, ‘Sugar is bad for you!’ underneath a drum beat.” -Mark (2020)

 ‘I got offered this Hawaiian Punch commercial, and when I wrote the music, the commercial had one line of dialogue: “Hawaiian Punch hits you in all the right places.” It was robots dancing along with humans dancing. It looked like it was based on the Devo live show. Afterward, I put in a drum fill, and I used a microphone and sang, “Sugar is bad for you.”

 When I met with the ad-agency people who hired me, I played them the commercial at their headquarters. There was one executive sitting there tapping his pen along with the music, and it goes, “Hawaiian Punch hits you in all the right places. Sugar is bad for you.” As soon as it was over, the executive went, “Yeah! Hawaiian Punch does hit you in all the right places.” He totally missed it. Bob was there with me for the meeting, and afterward he told me, “Jesus, you were so lucky.” I put it at the level where it would get embedded in your head like an earwig but it wouldn’t be loud enough that that was as loud as “Hawaiian Punch hits you in all the right places”.’ - Mark (2022)

 I found out that as long as you did what they wanted you to do and fulfilled what they needed for their commercial, you could put subliminal messages in national or international TV ads and most people wouldn’t hear it to say, “Hey, stop doing that!” It would just be in there. There would be people who would say, “Did he just say ‘sugar is bad for you’ along to the drumbeat?” Or “question authority” or something. I enjoyed that. - Mark (2022)

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“Hawaiian Punch (1987) - Mark Mothersbaugh” uploaded to YouTube by Vintage CG

Richard Martin. “Is He Not Mark Mothersbaugh?” CMJ New Music Magazine (1999, May): 57, 65 Photos by Chapman Baehler.

(PDF, p65)

 “...Mothersbaugh immediately rebounded. He won awards for his quirky score to a Hawaiian Punch commercial...”

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Petros, George (1986) Seconds#4, "Mark Mothersbaugh": "Mark Mothersbaugh is the voice of DEVO and a neo-psychedelic demon. No form of World Media has been overlooked in his quest for more and more power. You are the audience. These are your questions - you be the judge."

SECONDS: Did you ever use subliminal implants in any of your music or videos?

MM: Our very first video was called The Truth About De-evolution. We used to show it when we played in night clubs, like when we came out to places like Max's and CBGB in New York, and the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Los Angeles, we'd set up our chinsey little 16mm projector and show this seven and a half minute film before we went onstage.

I remember one night in Ohio, this woman came up to us, she was totally enraged, and she said, "I saw what you did in that film. You had the words submit and obey. I saw those words go through the film. You can't fool me." I thought, "What a good idea."... - Mark (1986)