10 Most Badass Songs Of All Time
6. Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down
Another old folk song made more powerful by a musician legendary in his gravitas, 'God's Gonna Cut You Down' is altogether different in how badass it is.
It doesn't pummel you in the face or empower you. It does the precise opposite of that: it warns you, chillingly, that all the lying and scheming might advance you in this life, but you will be shown no mercy in the next. The guitar barely deviates from its gentle, plucked pattern. It is as insistent as the narrator, whose old, steeled voice is so authoritative that not listening is enough to give pause to an atheist.
The arrangement is simple, confident, the perfect soundtrack to walking through a great and unknowable expanse, equipped with the knowledge that no stranger is more dangerous than death. You're perhaps not too likely to walk through the expanse, but whatever - this is a grand, wise reckoning of a song, one that makes you feel that bit better about the world.
It's a song that somehow makes boring concepts of morality and such cool - a genuine accomplishment on par with surviving a prison riot.