Changes

The song "Ripe" is a very moody, dark finale to ''The Fragile.'' The cassette and CD versions of the song featured an added part at the endadditional section, which further set the tone of the songoften referred to as "Decay. Most " Many of the instruments in the song are either sound out of tune, or the actual music is incompleteoddly tuned, such as the piano in the background track and some of the songparts seem to be incomplete. [[Trent Reznor]] himself spoke on this, saying that ''The Fragile'' was supposed to be a continuation of ''[[The Downward Spiral (halo)|The Downward Spiral]],'' with the protagonist going from happy to depressed on the first side (Left), then finding new hope on (Right) only to lose it again.

He also stated that due to the nature of the albumThe song mutates from a very beautiful piano improvisation by Mike Garson above a methodical, he wanted it to sound flawedslinking guitar riff, imperfect so to saygradually descending into chaos with several instruments playing wildly and disharmoniously before all the sounds stop at once. For "Decay" follows this reasonwith dark, moody bass and synth, most of and Reznor humming in the songs on background. The guitar picks back up and the album are performed by guitarsmusic becomes chaotic again for a moment, except for the obvious such just to stop as abruptly as "[[Into it started. The Void (song)|Into The Void]]," and "shares its tempo with [[The FrailBig Come Down]]," because stringed instruments are naturally imperfect, i.e., they come out of tune, they don't always make the same sound, etc..., and Reznor wanted to incorporate the imperfection of these instruments to represent the imperfections of life.

This version is only available on the vinyl edition of ''The Fragile.''After the slinking guitar riff returns post-piano improvisation, it and the insect noises below it simply fade out.

This version is on the CD and audio cassette releases of ''The Fragile.'' The extra (With Decay) part adds extends the song's length by an extra minute and twenty seconds to the song's outro.