Johnny Cash
Rick Rubin tells a story about approaching Johnny Cash in the early 90s, and offering the opportunity to do whatever he wanted. No other label was willing to do that for Cash, who had fallen out of popular appeal. They did four albums together before Cash died, and Hurt was on that final one.
It is of course, a Nine Inch Nails cover, which I think even Trent Reznor would probably acknowledge outdoes his own version. Actually, he comes close to that, in saying:
Wow. I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn’t mine anymore… I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure. [Alternative Press, via Wikipedia]
The simplicity of Cash’s voice and a guitar is truly beautiful.
Purchase Hurt on iTunes: 
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