Covers Week, part 4: Hurt

"Hurt"-- Nine Inch Nails and Johnny Cash

For anyone who has heard this song, it easily ranks among the most astonishing covers ever recorded. It would make an actual list of the greatest covers of all-time, rather than just one compiled by myself.

In a startling reversal of roles, an icon like Johnny Cash chooses to rendition of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt" from their hugely successful album The Downward Spiral. I call it a strange choice because Nine Inch Nails is Nine Inch Nails... I don't really know how to explain that any other way. Trent Reznor (who is in fact the band's only member) is a gothic icon-- a sort of Marilyn Manson with talent-- and The Downward Spiral in particular is probably one of the most disturbing 'mainstream' albums ever recorded.

It is one of the things I most admire about the American Recordings (see my earlier review), Cash's inclusion of figures like Reznor, Duran Duran, Beck as a way to just say "Yes, this is also American music." Cash's version is incredible for it's amazing capacity to, in a word, "humanize" the song. Reznor's version seems calculatedly twisted and disturbing, narrated by a kind of sick, sado-masochistic individual. Cash's more natural instrumentation and his familiar iconic voice transform the song into a kind of somewhat recognizable suffering-- while at the same time causing us to re-examine the ultimately disturbing nature of more 'traditional' music. (I'm not sure any Nine Inch Nails song could ever be as disturbing as Cash's iconic "Delia's Gone")

The sound of Cash's version is just amazing. The sound is just perfectly balanced. The American Recordings is one of the best produced albums I've ever heard, joining the ranks of Oh Mercy and Time Out of Mind.