Changes

<blockquote>"The one question I asked him was about playing The Perfect Drug live, and how the rehearsal process went for that song and why it never worked out. The first thing he said, without hesitation was that the song itself isn't that difficult to play live on the drums. He said something about the programmed beats part was the only thing that was sort of complicated (it was a little hard to hear him at times, crappy connection), but that it worked live with him playing it. The drumming sounded good and everyone was happy with that. He said the problem with the song was the ending. The whole song was really rocking and pushing through, then you get to the ending and it just never seemed to work. He said they tried four or so different endings to the song. They tried it kinda mellow sounding, and that didn't work. They tried a really aggressive ending, and that didn't work either. They did a simple ending, same result. They just couldn't find an ending to the sound that seemed to do it justice. The thing was that the song sounded really good, but to get to the ending and just not sound good, it was kind of a let down. He said [Trent Reznor] just seemed uninterested with it after a while and they just gave up on it."</blockquote>

Reznor answered a question about playing "The Perfect Drug" live directly during a 2017 Q&A in Chicago. He said:

<blockquote>"We've tried it. The unsexy answer is it just doesn't sound that good live. And it's hard to sing, and it ends up making me angry, so we don't do it."</blockquote>