Product Description

This is the fourth and last album from the Rick Rubin produced 'American' sessions to be released before Cash's death in September 2003. The album features a collection of covers including Beatles' 'In My Life' and Depeche Mode's 'PersonalJesus' as well as original tracks penned by Cash himself. The single 'Hurt', a cover of the Nine Inch Nails classic is also included.

Track Listing

1. The Man Comes Around
2. Hurt
3. Give My Love To Rose
4. Bridge Over Troubled Water
5. I Hung My Head
6. First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
7. Personal Jesus
8. In My Life
9. Sam Hall
10. Danny Boy
11. Desperado
12. I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry
13. Tear Stained Letter
14. Streets Of Laredo
15. We'll Meet Again
16. Big Iron
17. Hurt

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #452 in Music
• Released on: 2003-04-14
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced
• Running time: 60 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
On first thought, the idea of the Man in Black recording such covers as "Bridge over Troubled Water", "Danny Boy" and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" might seem odd, even for an artist who's been able to put his personal stamp on just about everything. But The Man Comes Around, which also draws on Cash's original songs as well as those by Nine Inch Nails ("Hurt"), Sting ("I Hung My Head") and Depeche Mode ("Personal Jesus"), may be one of the most autobiographical albums of the 70-year-old singer-songwriter's career. Nearly every tune seems chosen to afford the ailing giant of popular music a chance to reflect on his life, and look ahead to what's around the corner. From the opening track--Cash's own "The Man Comes Around", filled with frightening images of Armageddon--the album, produced by Rick Rubin, advances a quiet power and pathos, built around spare arrangements and unflinching honesty in performance and subject. In 15 songs, Cash moves through dark, haunted meditations on death and destruction, poignant farewells, testaments to everlasting love, and hopeful salutes to redemption. He sounds as if he means every word, his baritone-bass, frequently frayed and ravaged, taking on a weary beauty. By the time he gets to the Beatles' "In My Life", you'll very nearly cry. Go ahead. He sounds as if he's about to, too. --Alanna Nash

Customer Reviews

We'll Meet Again...
If the Grim Reaper traded in his scythe and recorded an album of melancholic country guitar music this, one imagines, is what it would sound like. Johnny Cash's rich Fire N' Brimstone tones haven't diminished one bit despite his advancing years, but listen carefully and we now find it tinged with something soft and imperceptibly fragile. Something almost like regret (or relief) of a life lived through.

Cash is one of those rare artists that can take a song, any song, and turn it utterly on its head, allowing the dark stuff of life to ooze out and re-contextualize it in ways you'd never even considered. Just listen to his version of We'll Meet Again. It belongs right at the end of Dr Strangelove when all the nukes are going off and the whole world has gone to heck. There's something quite morbidly beautiful about both the utter resignation and sheer joy in his voice that we know deep down in our marrow that he is indeed going to a much better place and the loss truly is all ours.

Outstanding performance
Yes, Johnny Cash was obviously ailing when he performed these songs, no, it makes absolutely no difference. The power is there, the sheer aura of the man is there, his outstanding ability to take the simplest song and make it special. Yes, Trent Rezner 'took back' his song 'Hurt' at the Reading Festival but no, he hasn't entirely regained his crown. Johnny Cash's rendition of the song is still heartbreaking. It brought tears the first time I played it.
Brilliant album. Buy it. Love it. Treasure it. They don't come better than this.

The Man Comes Around
I can't understand the rave reviews given to this CD. As a fan of Johnny Cash since the mid-fifties with a huge collection of his recordings, I have to say this last one is, frankly embarrassing to listen to, because it is the "singing" of a dying old man, feeble and terribly out of tune.It should never have been made.With one exception, this applies to the other Rick Rubin recordings.
Let's face it, Johnny was never a great singer in the accepted sense, but was popular because of the wonderful way he put his music across, with that distictive voice and superb backing. His best stuff has to be the Sun and CBS recordings spanning 30 years from the mid-fifties to the mid-eighties, when he had youth on his side. They were truly great. I think there are two exceptionally good recordings from the "later" years though.They are "Classic Cash '88" (Mercury) - a stunner and the second volume of the American recordings with the backing of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (Unchained). People new to his music should listen to those two for his best later stuff and of course,the Sun and CBS recordings "Walk The Line", "Ring Of Fire" and the countless others from that great 30 year period!