Johnny Cash was there when rock'n'roll was born, one of the musicians in the legendary 'Sun records' label, which spawned Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and others. Together they created rockabilly, a fusion of black rhythm 'n blues and southern country, which created the biggest bang pop has ever known. From there he went in a country direction, becoming a legend in that field, but the connection to rock and blues was always there as well. His deep and dark voice had appeal to rock fans, and enabled him to sound convincing even when covering songs from the darkest regions of metal. Here he takes 'Hurt', Nine Inch Nails' blood-curdling ballad of loneliness and loss of humanity, and turns it into the song of a man who stands alone in the face of death, feeling life slowly seeping out of his body. The record came out two months after his demise, and was an appropriate epitaph to one of the truly great ones.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
51. Johnny Cash – Hurt (2003)
During the decade we said goodbye to some of the giants of 20th century music, the people who shaped the form of pop music in the fifties and the sixties, and turned it into the main expression of the human spirit. A lot of them died young, paying the price for being the pioneers, and those who survived and lived to see the new millennium started to drop dead from natural causes. Ray Charles, Bo Diddley, James Brown, George Harrison, Isaac Hayes, Syd Barrett and many more did not make it alive to the end of the decade. Among them, the one who left the most lacerating last words was Johnny Cash, who knew years ahead about his impending death, and poured it all into his music.
Johnny Cash was there when rock'n'roll was born, one of the musicians in the legendary 'Sun records' label, which spawned Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and others. Together they created rockabilly, a fusion of black rhythm 'n blues and southern country, which created the biggest bang pop has ever known. From there he went in a country direction, becoming a legend in that field, but the connection to rock and blues was always there as well. His deep and dark voice had appeal to rock fans, and enabled him to sound convincing even when covering songs from the darkest regions of metal. Here he takes 'Hurt', Nine Inch Nails' blood-curdling ballad of loneliness and loss of humanity, and turns it into the song of a man who stands alone in the face of death, feeling life slowly seeping out of his body. The record came out two months after his demise, and was an appropriate epitaph to one of the truly great ones.
Johnny Cash was there when rock'n'roll was born, one of the musicians in the legendary 'Sun records' label, which spawned Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and others. Together they created rockabilly, a fusion of black rhythm 'n blues and southern country, which created the biggest bang pop has ever known. From there he went in a country direction, becoming a legend in that field, but the connection to rock and blues was always there as well. His deep and dark voice had appeal to rock fans, and enabled him to sound convincing even when covering songs from the darkest regions of metal. Here he takes 'Hurt', Nine Inch Nails' blood-curdling ballad of loneliness and loss of humanity, and turns it into the song of a man who stands alone in the face of death, feeling life slowly seeping out of his body. The record came out two months after his demise, and was an appropriate epitaph to one of the truly great ones.
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