Category: Music

From a review of the new Johnny Cash album American VI: Ain’t No Grave:

The success in large part on this sixth collection, as with the entire series, comes down to song selection, which [producer Rick] Rubin has overseen with excellent taste. Talk about a dream job: Thinking up cool songs for Johnny Cash to cover. And Cash was an incredible trooper over the ten-year period that Rubin recorded him, taking on everything from country to metal to pop standards with equal alacrity. Cash only rarely refused a tune, recording over a hundred different songs for the first in the series, American Recordings, alone. (Exception: Cash wouldn’t sing “Imagine” because he couldn’t get behind John Lennon’s wouldn’t-it-be-awesome-if-no-one-believed-in-God sentiment.)

The idea of Johnny Cash refusing to sing that overplayed treacle is very appealing to me. Anyway, the album is indeed great.

I’m pretty obsessed with this album at the moment.