10 Best Songs Released After The Singer Passed Away

7. Johnny Cash – ‘God's Gonna Cut You Down’ (2006)

Rick Rubin is usually associated with starting Def Jam in the '80s and producing records for rock titans like Metallica, Rage Against the Machine and Nine Inch Nails. But what's often forgotten from Rubin's legacy is when he hooked up with country renegade Johnny Cash in the early '90s, in a creative partnership that would lasted until the end of Cash's life.

They called their series of albums together the ‘American Recordings’ , and it would kick-start a resurgence for Cash, whose career had waned throughout the '80s.

Each of the six American Recordings featured acoustic originals and covers. Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails song ‘Hurt’ was famously on these recordings. Following a period of failing health, Cash died on 12 September 2003 following complications caused by diabetes.

Four of the American Recordings albums came out before Cash's death in 2003 but two were released afterwards, including ‘American V: A Hundred Highways’, which included his cover of ‘God's Gonna Cut You Down’.

'God's Gonna Cut You Down' traditionally is a folk song, with Johnny’s take on it altering from most known gospel versions of the song. The lyrics caution sinners that they cannot bypass God’s judgement, and that we all pass under it in the end.

The raw honesty and straightforwardness in Cash’s vocals are so powerful. He could deliver poignantly better than anyone in his later life, no more evident than on this classic.