Nearly seven years have passed since Johnny Cash died, but the country music titan continues to impact popular culture.
Cash would have been 78 this past Friday, and the release of American VI: Ain’t No Grave, the final edition in the album series created with producer Rick Rubin, was timed to mark the occasion. But who could have predicted this perfectly timed birthday surprise: On Wednesday, iTunes celebrated its 10 billionth song sold, Johnny Cash’s 1958 single, “Guess Things Happen That Way.” Cool move, Universe!
Like its five predecessors, American VI collects songs recorded at Rubin’s suggestion, but Cash himself wanted to cover one in particular: “Redemption Day,” written by Sheryl Crow and taken from her 1996 self-titled sophomore album. Rubin told Rolling Stone that while planning the sessions for American VI, Cash said that “he would give up all the other songs just for this one.” To ensure his interpretation matched Crow’s original intent, the Man in Black consulted her by phone. “If he was going to sing a song, it was going to be a part of his molecular makeup,” Crow recently told Reuters. “He was going to deliver it as if he wrote it. The questions that he asked and his concern for whether I would like what he was doing, it was just really humbling.”
I never thought Cash could top his cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt,” which appeared on 2002’s American IV: The Man Comes Around, but he comes awfully close with “Redemption Day.” It’s hard to separate the man from the music, and knowing Cash was acutely aware he was nearing the end of his life while recording songs for American VI, Crow’s lyric about a “train heading straight to heaven’s gate” takes on personal resonance. Hear here:
NIN’s Trent Reznor remarked upon hearing Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” via the haunting Mark Romanek-directed music video that the song was no longer his. That claim was further cemented when Sheryl Crow performed “Hurt” during CMT’s memorial tribute to Johnny Cash, taped shortly after the singer’s death in September 2003. Head here to see the clip.
Purchase Johnny Cash – “Redemption Day” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.
