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Lisa and I watched Walk The Line a few months ago, and afterwards I sought out Johnny Cash’s The Man Comes Around album which features the track, Hurt. If you’ve ever listened to Johnny Cash, the album itself is an essential part of Cash’s discography.

Hurt, in particular, has the potential to break your heart. Johnny’s voice is heavy and frail throughout, and the slow pounding piano grows and becomes more insistent as the song reaches its end.

What gets me is how Cash re-interprets a song written by someone from a completely different generation (Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails).

Having seen the Walk The Line biopic and knowing a little bit about Cash’s life makes the song all the more poignant. The accompanying video is a tasteful retrospective of various milestones in his career, and the song takes on such a raw, personal quality. I have to say that I have never heard a song before or since that has had such a profound effect on me.

For me, the most touching part of the video is where Johnny is performing in the lounge of his house and you see his wife June looking down from the staircase. Her face appears careworn and anxious. Both were at the later stages of their lives and died within months of each other in 2003.

I don’t think there’s another song that I could name that has such poignance and depth. Check out the video.