Johnny Cash - American IV: The Man Comes Around (Bonus DVD)
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Artist: Johnny CashBrand: CASH,JOHNNY
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Published: 2003-01-01
CD Release Date: 2003-03-04
Music Label: American/Lost Highway
Soundtracks:
- The Man Comes Around
- Hurt
- Give My Love To Rose
- Bridge Over Troubled Water
- I Hung My Head
- First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
- Personal Jesus
- In My Life
- Sam Hall
- Danny Boy
- Desperado
- I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
- Tear Stained Letter
- Streets of Laredo
- We'll Meet Again
Music reviews of American IV: The Man Comes Around (Bonus DVD)
Music Review: Great Album Despite Trying Too Hard to Be Cool for the MTV Generation
Rating: 5 Stars
This album has some great moments, and some bad moments. Fortunately, the good stuff far outweighs the bad, and this is one of my favorite studio albums from Johnny Cash.
The best parts of this great album are when Johnny Cash is doing his own thing and Rick Rubin backs him up; the worst comes when Rick Rubin grabs the wheel and gets Johnny involved with some really out-of-character musical material, just for the shock value, and to get the MTV generation interested in Johnny Cash.
I LOVE Johnny's own, original song "When the Man Comes Around." This is now one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs! It is full of Bible references about the great tribulation at the end of the world! Johnny was always dead serious about his Bible songs and projects and this is one of his very best songs ever!
(BTW, I can highly recommend Johnny Cash's affordable 16 CD set of his spoken word reading of the entire NEW TESTAMENT of the BIBLE, and his self-produced movie THE GOSPEL ROAD, now on DVD at good prices on amazon.com)!
"Give My Love to Rose" and "Tear Stained Letter" are other great, original songs from Johnny Cash on this album!
Johnny also does plenty of older songs that are also interesting and entertaining to listen to. The Eagles oldie, "Desperado" has always been a great singalong, and Johnny's version is a very welcome addition to the legend of this famous song! The classics "Danny Boy," the stark "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" (by Hank Williams), and "Bridge Over Trouble Waters" (by Simon and Garfunkel), are also great to hear from Johnny.
Johnny plays a song written by Sting, of The Police, "I Hung My Head," which sounds like the kind of outlaw song that Cash would write for himself, or record it because it fit his style enough to be a real "Johnny Cash" song.
"In My Life" is interesting to hear at least once, but I personally don't like John Lennon anymore, because he is famous for doing drugs, pretending there's no Heaven, (Imagine that!) and saying he's "bigger than Jesus!" I wonder if Johnny paid much attention to who and where some of these songs came from? Johnny's version of "In My Life" has him struggling to stay on key, and even if you like the song, Johnny's singing shortcomings on this particular tune are very distracting.
In the book of Acts, in the Bible, the Apostles are described as "turning the world upside-down," but Rick Rubin's record company, American, uses an upside-down Amercian flag as its logo, (attempting to turn Johnny Cash's legendary musical influence into something strange?), which says much about Rick Rubin, in my opinion.
I never liked anything producer Rick Rubin did with other artists. Here, I feared that he was pimping Johnny Cash, but Johnny is still in enough control that Rick Rubin mostly ends up working around Johnny's ideas, and Cash only seems to tolerate Rubin's lame input.
Case in point: the song "Personal Jesus." I have to admit that I bought this album to verify that Johnny Cash had not done the unthinkable and recorded a song that makes fun of Jesus! "Personal Jesus" is by no means a respectful Gospel tune, and its original video and recording by the weird and morbid band called Depeche Mode, featuring Brokeback-looking band members dressed as cowboys visiting a bordello, looking at a horse's rear end and breathing heavily, seems to suggest phone sex a lot more than Christian salvation, there's no denying.
Luckily, though Rubin tricks Johnny Cash into recording this musical embarrassment, the lyrics alone, in the Johnny Cash version, contain none of the R-rated innuendo that was all over the Depeche Mode video and musical original. Cash outfoxes Rubin on this one, probably by accident! Now I can listen to "Personal Jesus" by Johnny Cash, and not feel bad that Rick Rubin tricked Johnny. Johnny stays the course while tolerating Rick Rubin's goofy song suggestions.
Another loser is the song and video for "Hurt" by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, another lame MTV rock star band that Cash would never have laid ears on if not for Rick Rubin. Where "Personal Jesus" is made listenable and interesting by Johnny Cash's version, as an oddity and curiosity piece; the lame lyrics of "Hurt" cannot be salvaged even by Johnny Cash's attempt.
My copy of this CD (and probably yours, too, if you buy this) comes with a surprise, extra disc which contains the music video of this song that was apparently a hit in 2003. The Johnny Cash flashbacks are cool, and if you turn the sound off, it is fun to see short clips from Johnny's career. But this song is just too far gone due to Trent Reznor's clueless lyrics about shooting up with needles, in a way that Johnny Cash could only relate to as a man suffering from diabetes needing insulin shots at home, though Reznor means the lyrics to be hip and cool and trendy to be struggling with heroin addiction (what else could it be?). This song is definitely a low point in the Johnny Cash discography.
The good stuff on this CD is great! I just tell my CD player to skip the bad stuff, and I still get more than my money's worth from Johnny Cash, despite Rick Rubin's goofy song suggestions. I thank Rick Rubin for keeping Johnny recording, ("Thanks, Rick!"), but I fault Rick Rubin for some of the worst musical suggestions in Johnny's whole career.
Description of American IV: The Man Comes Around (Bonus DVD)
Bonus DVD contains the music video for "Hurt", directed my Mark Romanek.On first thought, the idea of The Man in Black recording such covers as "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Danny Boy," and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" might seem odd, even for an artist who?s been able to put his personal stamp on just about everything. But American IV: The Man Comes Around, which also draws on Cash?s original songs as well as those by Nine Inch Nails ("Hurt"), Sting ("I Hung My Head"), and Depeche Mode ("Personal Jesus"), may be one of the most autobiographical albums of the 70-year old singer-songwriter?s career. Nearly every tune seems chosen to afford the ailing giant of popular music a chance to reflect on his life--and look ahead to what?s around the corner. From the opening track, Cash?s own "The Man Comes Around," filled with frightening images of Armageddon, the album, produced by Rick Rubin, advances a quiet power and pathos, built around spare arrangements and unflinching honesty in performance and subject. In 15 songs, Cash moves through dark, haunted meditations on death and destruction, poignant farewells, testaments to everlasting love, and hopeful salutes to redemption. He sounds as if he means every word, his baritone-bass, frequently frayed and ravaged, taking on a weary beauty. By the time he gets to the Beatles? "In My Life," you?ll very nearly cry. Go ahead. He sounds as if he?s about to, too. Unforgettable. (This special 2003 version includes a bonus DVD with the music video for "Hurt.") --Alanna Nash
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