As I’ve mentioned a few times before, I do love Johnny Cash and I do love his beautiful, rumbling, emotional voice. He sang songs like he meant every word.
NME listed this video as the greatest music video of all time, and it is easy to see why. Hurt was Cash’s last ever hit before he passed away.
The song itself is hard enough to listen to, being as the lyrics include “I will let you down. I will make you hurt.” Cash made this uniquely his own and the song is often said to be his final goodbye, and a tearful lament to all the people he felt he had let down in his eventful life. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails wrote the song, and has praised Cash over and over for his beautiful interpretation. He said that listening to it was like “losing a girlfriend”, because he felt the song now belonged to Cash.
The video was directed by former NIN collaborator Mark Romanek, whose idea it was to film Cash as he was then, add images and film of him as a younger man and the imagery of fruits and flowers in various states of decay. Romanek also filmed inside the “House of Cash” museum in Nashville, which was in a very poor state and had been closed to the public for quite some time.
The video is felt to be a candid view on the state of Cash’s health. His wife, June Carter Cash, also features in the video. She died three months after filming. Cash died on 12 September 2003.
From the album: America IV: The Man Comes Around
Released: March 2003
