Here’s a great retrospective of the final five Johnny Cash albums (well, technically the last one was released posthumously), which were released on Rick Rubin’s American Recordings label. A piece on Cash’s earlier work is promised in weeks to come. (Fair warning: contains bad language.)

I remember being in college and listening to “The Wanderer” on U2’s Zooropa (still their most underrated album, IMO and better than most of what they’ve put out since) and realizing just how badass Johnny Cash was. Though I grew up listening to country music via my parents, they weren’t really big Cash fans. (Willie and Waylon were household favorites though.) So it was ironically through U2 that I really discovered him.