I don’t think this is necessary. You should already own the new Johnny Cash album, and therefore you should already know how awesome it is. But, I’ma do it anyways.
This is the last collection of songs recorded before The Man in Black’s untimely death in 2003. Produced by none other that Hollywood’s most famous ZZ Top impersonator, Rick Rubin.
This album, “American V: A Hundred Highways”, is more or less a collection of covers/traditional folk songs, with the exception of “Like the 309”, and “I Came to Believe”, both Johnny Cash originals.
Johnny Cash’s ability to convey emotion through his voice, as amazing as it is, I think even improved with age. Songs on this album, such as “Help Me” and “If You Could Read My Mind”, as well as previous songs like the infamous Nine Inch Nails cover “Hurt”, inspire the surfacing of emotion so deep that you never even saw it coming.
I don’t think anyone can put it better than Mr. Rubin himself did when he wrote for the album liner notes, “You can hear the difference on some of these songs. Sometimes he booms and other times he sounds weaker and more vulnerable, but in the end his ability to convey words in a way the listener can truly feel and believe them is amazingly consistent. He was the master storyteller of our time.”
