Reznor gets a little too over the top for me in his version. The Cash video brings tears to my eyes, even more so now that he’s gone.
I’ve never been a Cash fan, but the few covers I’ve heard from his American series make me want to delve deeper.
Just saying it’s pretentious doesn’t make it so… what about the contrast of a man’s younger life and his current one is pretentious?
I was curious, so I DLed the Cash video and wow, that is some moving stuff. Very powerful, even moreso since my dad died not too long ago.
I found Cash’s version to be deeply moving. Every time I hear the song and see the video, I start to tear up.
I don’t particularly like the Cash cover, and though I’ve seen the video once or twice, I never paid much attention to it since I disliked the song version so much. I am a Nine Inch Nails fan, and while I prefer Reznor’s live versions of it better, I love Hurt as it was recorded too. I have a…relationship?..with that version (and the entire album) and listening to Johnny Cash alter it and change it so much really bothers me. I haven’t heard it in a while, though. Perhaps I should give it another chance.
I also have a bootleg of a Reznor/David Bowie version (when Bowie went on tour with NIN) and I don’t like that one either. I guess I’m just really set in my ways, and I don’t like change very much!
I love the song, I love Cash’s cover it it more, and the video is one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen.
Just out of curiousity - those of you who don’t like it - how old are you? I just turned 40 - old enough to see those changes happening to me, and about the same age as the ‘young’ Cash in the video. So that video strikes a big chord with me - it hits me where I live.
Perhaps when I was much younger I would have just yawned at it all, but I like to think not.
Well, Reznor had this to say:
“We were in the studio, getting ready to work – and I popped it in,” Reznor says. "By the end I was really on the verge of tears. I’m working with Zach de la Rocha, and I told him to take a look. At the end of it, there was just dead silence. There was, like, this moist clearing of our throats and then, ‘Uh, OK, let’s get some coffee.’’
Cite: http://www.stagepassnews.com/articles/vox/johnnycash_hurt.html
Romanek: (the video director) had this to say:
“This [concept] is completely and utterly alien to what videos are supposed to be,” Romanek said. “Videos are supposed to be eye candy — hip and cool and all about youth and energy. This one is about someone [moving] toward the twilight of his career, this powerful, legendary figure who is dealing with issues and emotions you’re not used to encountering in videos.”
Cite: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1470173/20030226/cash_johnny.jhtml
And the crux of why so many of us find it incredible and unique is summed up in this introductory statement from NME.com:
Candid and intense, it sees The Man In Black perform the song in his home, with no effort made to hide his age or increasing frailty. The poignancy is increased as the performance shots are cut with old images of a young and vital Cash jumping trains and striding the earth.
Cite: http://www.nme.com/features/104451.htm
Checking out the three links will deepen the case for why this is such an incredible video and performance.
Johnny Cash’s voice isn’t suited to the song? Really? I thought it worked terribly well, myself. His voice when he was younger wouldn’t have suited it all that well, but his voice as an elderly man suited it wonderfully.
I first saw the video a week or so after June died, and it reduced me to a sniveling pile of jello. It was quiet and somber and introspective, which always pretty much summed up the Man in Black to me. It elevated the music video to the level of art, rather than a device to sell singles or ad time on MTV, and I thought it was beautiful.
This is EXACTLY the reason I love this cover and video. It shows the result of the what the song is talking about. The young, hip Cash contrasted with one ravaged by years of drug use. Extremely powerful and tearjerking. My favorite video ever.
And I loved the original as well.
I like the original NIN version.
I like Johnny Cash’s version
I like the video.
It’s definitely pretentious at times, but who here has never engaged in pretension.
You have this whole “Man In Black” thing that’s been built up over the years, often for good reason, but what is that but an artificial image or pretense? Sure Johnny Cash bucked the system, often identified with society’s fuckups, and often burned a candle at both ends.
What the video shows is that that whole image was an incomplete picture. With the video, we get to see that pretense, but we also get to see the creature behind it all once it was no longer viable to maintain the image.
What I see in the video is a man looking back on a lifetime, and realizing that there were a few things which made that life worthwhile, most notably his family, and that the whole drug-taking hard-drinking lifestyle of a C&W or rock star was something that veiled the things that were truly important.
The closed museum is a perfect symbol. It essentially shows that, at the end of the day, all the trappings of stardom and celebrity don’t really mean much when you’re a scared old man looking to make his peace as the end is something which can clearly be seen now, just a short while away.
So yes, the video has pretensions. But it also shows Johnny Cash as a human, frail and old, naked as he leaves.
Trent Reznor has said in at least one interview that he was pretty astounded that Cash was able to cover the song, and in doing so, make it so personal to his own life.
It’s written by Reznor, but it becomes a Cash song in the cover. Johnny Cash has done that to quite a few covers.
In summary, I love the video in spite of it’s flaws. Overall, it seems honest to me.
I am as die-hard, lifelong a Johnny Cash fan as exists on this earth.
I was literally moved to tears by other songs from the album (‘When the Man Comes Around’, ‘Danny Boy’, ‘We’ll Meet Again’).
I find the images from the ‘Hurt’ video very moving.
But I just don’t care for the song. Different strokes, I guess.
I can’t honestly say if I ever heard the NIN original, but when I saw the video of Cash’s cover I got wishy-washy.