Johnny Cash is a music and cultural icon, and one of his best songs came in the twilight of his career when he covered Trent Reznor’s “Hurt”. Trent Reznor wrote the song and recorded it with Nine Inch Nails in 1994, but Johnny Cash made it his own when he released his version in 2002. The accompanying 2003 music video can only be described as haunting. It’s a juxtaposition of an old and frail Cash mixed with clips of him in his prime. It shows how the passage of time affects us all, even legends like Johnny Cash. He was seventy-one years old when they made it and MTV still played it in heavy rotation. MTV’s target audience is teenagers and twenty-somethings, so that just shows how amazing the video is. It’s powerful. It’s universal. It’s impossible not to like it, even if you’re not a fan of country music or old people.
Critically Rated at 16/17
Written, Rated, and Reviewed by Brendan H. Young
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