10 Classic Music Albums Turning 20 In 2022
2. American IV The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
No artist really has a choice of how they want to go out. Life is always going to be unpredictable, and there's no guarantee that you'll be able to bow out gracefully while you're still at the top. Even after half a century of being a country superstar, Johnny Cash tugged at our heartstrings one last time on American IV.
While it's easy to chalk up most of the praise for this album on Cash's cover of Hurt by Nine Inch Nails, almost half of the deep tracks work their way into your soul at some point. Along with the work of Trent Reznor, Cash covers quite a few rockers on this record, from totally reimagining Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus to going for beautiful ballads like the Beatles' In My Life or Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water. This is still a country album though, and songs like Give My Love to Rose are a good indicator of how far Cash has come after all this time.
Compared to all of the great arrangements on the album, the greatest instrument on here is Cash's voice, with his broken down baritone sounding a lot more weather worn and beaten. You can tell that this is a man that has made a few mistakes in his life, but he's not really willing to count himself out just yet. Here was the Man in Black looking at death square in the face, and yet this album managed to put in just a little bit of sunshine at the end of his life.