"Only" is a song by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released on July 25, 2005 as the second single from their fourth studio album, With Teeth. The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart, where it stayed for seven weeks, and on the UK Rock & Metal. It was the band's second most successful release in the UK, peaking at No. 20.
Singer Trent Reznor said the song is about the music business clashing with his artistic desires:
"Only" was the last song completed for With Teeth.
Like the previous single, "The Hand That Feeds", "Only" was only widely released in Europe. European releases include a CD, a DVD, and a 9" vinyl. The only United States release is a vinyl formatâÂÂa remix record with mixes from Richard X and El-P. Most versions of the single featured "Love Is Not Enough (Live at Rehearsals)", which was recorded live in the studio by the then-current lineup of the band (Reznor, Jerome Dillon, Alessandro Cortini, Jeordie White, and Aaron North).
Like "The Hand That Feeds", "Only" was released as a GarageBand multitrack file, as well as for DigiDesign Pro Tools, Ableton Live, and Sony ACID Pro. A fan remix community page was set up on MySpace.
"Only" has been labeled as dance-rock, dance-punk, new wave revival and synth-pop.
The music video for "Only", directed by David Fincher and relying almost entirely on CGI created by Digital Domain, shows various objects in an executive's office, such as pin art, Newton's Cradle and laptop screen saver coming to life with the propulsion of the song and was released on July 12, 2005, at NIN.com.
The main focus is Reznor's face in the pinscreen that sits on the desk, which is the only way he appears in the video. The only non-CGI components of the video are a person's hand (Fincher's, who owns the PowerBook in the video) and the cars in the background.