Johnny Cash – Hurt

“Hurt” – Single by Johnny Cash from the album American IV: The Man Comes Around. Released in March 2003. Recorded in 2002

Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt never should have worked. Even Cash had his doubts at first. “When I heard the record, I said: ‘I can’t do that song. It’s not my style,” he said. But after four successful albums with Rick Rubin, he trusted the producer’s sometimes left-field instincts.

In 2002, Johnny Cash covered the song for his album, American IV: The Man Comes Around. Its accompanying video, featuring images from Cash’s life and directed by Mark Romanek, was named the best video of the year by the Grammy Awards and CMA Awards, and the best video of all time by NME in July 2011. The single contains a cover of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” as a B-side.

Cash’s cover of the song had sold 2,148,000 downloads in the United States as of March 2017.

Cash’s cover is widely considered one of his best works. In 2017, Billboard ranked the song number four on their list of the 15 greatest Johnny Cash songs, and in 2021, American Songwriter ranked the song number three on their list of the 10 greatest Johnny Cash songs.

The music video was directed by former Nine Inch Nails collaborator Mark Romanek, who sought to capture the essence of Cash, both in his youth and in his older years. In a montage of shots of Cash’s early years, twisted imagery of fruit and flowers in various states of decay, seem to capture both his legendary past and the stark and seemingly cruel reality of the present. Much of the video is in a style deliberately reminiscent of vanitas paintings, thus emphasizing the lyrics’ mood of the futility and passing nature of human achievements. According to literature professor Leigh H. Edwards, the music video portrays “Cash’s own paradoxical themes”.

Romanek had this to say about his decision to focus on the House of Cash museum in Nashville:

It had been closed for a long time; the place was in such a state of dereliction. That’s when I got the idea that maybe we could be extremely candid about the state of Johnny’s health, as candid as Johnny has always been in his songs.

When the video was filmed in February 2003, Cash was 71 years old and had serious health problems. His frailty is clearly evident in the video. He died seven months later, on September 12; his wife, June Carter Cash, who is shown gazing at her husband in two sequences of the video, had died on May 15 of the same year.

In July 2011, the music video was named one of “The 30 All-TIME Best Music Videos” by Time. It was ranked the greatest music video of all time by NME.

The house where Cash’s music video for “Hurt” was shot, which was Cash’s home for nearly 30 years, was destroyed in a fire on April 10, 2007.

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