Ending this series for now with the cover that cemented a legacy, a career, and a life.
The Nine Inch Nails original version is something I had to work my way through later, since it was Johnny Cash’s take that I heard first. The Cash video is especially moving, and clearly inspired later late-stage takes like Billy Joel’s recent “Turn the Lights Back On.”
My dad’s a pretty big fan of Johnny Cash and there was a period where we listened together all the time, but it was all his earlier stuff. To this day I’m not sure he knows “Hurt” exists, probably wouldn’t know what to make of it, the same as although hilariously the reverse of his relationship with Cab Calloway, whom he adores in Blues Brothers but when I got him a CD of his vintage material had no idea why it was remotely relevant, because there was only one version he was prepared to admire.
“Hurt” will long be the classic example (it’s now more than two decades old!) of what it looks like for an aging well-known music act to make a definitive late career popular impact. Knowing what Cash sounded like in his prime and then hearing him like this is elegiac.
No comments:
Post a Comment