“Burning Bright (Field on Fire)” was released one week after NIN announced Not the Actual Events. It is a typically heavy, brooding track about destruction and struggle, fitting with Reznor’s statement about the EP:

It’s an unfriendly, fairly impenetrable record that we needed to make.

In an interview with The Guardian, Reznor lays out the seeming inspiration for this track, as well as the “trilogy” of releases (comprised of Not The Actual Events, Add Violence, and Bad Witch):

For Reznor, the records started “from this position of: I think I know who I am now, the chaos feels behind me, there’s family life and stability. It was me daring myself to say: ‘What if all that was bullshit? And what I really am is an addict in remission that can’t wait to light a match to the whole thing?’”