The greatest video of all time?

On a day when no one was given the secret handshake to the weird little Moose lodge in Cooperstown, we pause to consider a truly earth shaking question.

Is Johnny Cash’s video for “Hurt” the greatest of all time?

Johnny Cash is a man’s man. He’s lived hard, spent too much time in prisons singing to guys named Bubba, Snake and the sisters. He is not of good health and is rarely seen in public these days. Country music is always of dubious entertainment value. Sure, CMT might be the greatest assemblage of babes on TV these days (Faith, Shania, Martina McBride, and jailbait hotties like LeAnn Rimes and Jessica Andrews—trust me on the last one), but has it ever really been “cool” to listen to country music? Probably not.

Johnny Cash has always been the exception. Johnny Cash has always been cool. And now, at 70, he’s dying. And he’s also just made the one video that can make you stop clicking the remote past CMT that doesn’t involve Faith writhing under a sheet in the desert or Jessica driving a sweet ’04 Thunderbird.

Johnny’s cover of the Nine In Nails song “Hurt” is one thing. But combine him singing that song with this video and yikes. I TiVo’d the damn thing for chrissakes.

When Trent Reznor wrote “Hurt”, I’m sure he didn’t have Johnny Cash in mind. He had drug addiction and screwing over loved ones and being so dependant on heroin that you could think of nothing else except heroin and death–on his mind.

Johnny’s version is more about looking back at your life and wanting to do it over again, and wanting to do things differently. It’s a song that takes “I have no regrets” and shines the light of truth on it so it comes out “Hell yes, I have regrets.”

Rolling Stone talked with Reznor after he got a chance to see the video. “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.'”

The video does nothing to hide Johnny’s deteriorating health, and that’s what makes it so stunning. Look at his hands, his face, his nose. And the voice is still there, though it’s weaker and even more gravelly than normal.

It’s just Johnny.

And that’s always been cool.

11 Comments

E.T. Murray on February 26, 2003 at 6:58 pm

Perhaps it is the crappy connection and monitor that I have at home, but that video looked like it was claymation. Claymation is cool.

In junior high, I learned that if A=B, and B=C, then A=C. So, if claymation is cool, and the Johnny Cash video is claymation, then Johnny Cash is cool.

I agree with Andy.

R Kelly on February 27, 2003 at 7:58 am

Damn, Andy. Good call on that Jessica Andrews. Her latest video (the B/W one where she’s driving the T-bird through the desert) is fine. I’ve had my eye on her since she a few years ago when she was about 16 and was in a boat in swamp with some 30-year old hunk who was making out with her. Let me say right here and now that I was NOT the legal advisor for that video.

And how does LeAnn Rimes keep her little thingies in that slinky dress in her latest video?

Fachman on February 27, 2003 at 1:57 pm

I just checked out the Cash video. It is really something. I am a Cash fan and have always admired the honesty of his music. This is probably, in video form, one of the most dark and powerful performances I have ever seen. Great call Andy.

My wife bought me the CD and I just started listening to it. Besides this song there are some other covers including a cool version of "Personal Jesus", which I first heard on the Kingpin mini series on network TV. Almost all of the songs are dark, but what would you expect from the man in black.