Johnny Cash - Hurt 

I can think of no greater honor than to have Johnny Cash cover a song you wrote as his final goodbye.

I know I’m not the only one, but “everyone I know goes away in the end” hits harder and harder the older I get.

“Trust gets you killed, love gets you hurt and being real gets you hated.” -Johnny cash

The way June looks at him breaks me every time. She passed three months later.

“Money can’t buy back your youth when you’re old, a friend when you’re lonely, or peace to your soul.” Johnny Cash

Reznor's version is a young man battling self-destructive tendencies. Cash's version is an old man near the end of his life, looking back on past regrets.

My teacher gave this for homework, so here I am. Never heard of Johnny Cash or this song, but it was well worth it and I see why our teacher wanted us to watch it.

It is truly shameful that the CMA's didn't recognize the brilliance of the American Recordings by Cash until after his passing. Cash is on the Mount Rushmore of Country music and will always be seen as a pioneer. This just shows his greatness even later in his life.

I’m not afraid of dying I’m afraid of everyone I care about dying.

Cash's version of this song is great, but the old footage interspersed throughout the video just enhances the meaning and pushes it over the top. Like life flashing before his eyes in his final days.

I broke down to this song please forgive us lord for owe sins

This man saved my life. His words guided me through a darkness I never imagined walking through. Addiction to heroin is horrible. its so sad how people treat you. I remember asking myself WHAT HAVE I BECOME, saying EVERYONE I KNOW GOES AWAY IN THE END I DID LET THEM DOWN, I DID MAKE THEM HURT. Until i met my wife to be ..., and then i remembered he said If i could start again, a million miles away, i would keep myself, i would find a way. I did keep myself, i found a way. I started again, a million miles away. A million miles away from the hell i was in. To the love, unconditional love from my wife. My Pap admired this man. He played that song when I confessed my addiction. He said he understood, and that I should try and do as he said, ajd he was right, I found out the others were someone else, i am still right here 😊

I don’t think there has ever been a more pure look into the window of someone’s soul than this recording. It’s a masterpiece.

“One of the saddest and most memorable songs in all of history.”

If Johnny Cash covers a song you wrote, it is no longer your song. It belongs to the ages.

2024, 35, going through a divorce, financial issues, depression... This song hits me really really hard now, Johnny.

He's *71,* his voice is wearing out, he's 6 months away from dying, but he still picked up his guitar and did the best he could do. LEGEND!

You didn’t let us down, But you did make it hurt. Rest in peace, Johnny 1932 - 2003

This is the anthem of a man realizing what matters in life.

regrets? you bet. This is so haunting and a confession in itself.

An old man reflects on his life before he faces eternity. God bless Johnny Cash's soul.

Seeing a young man regret his life decisions is sad, but we know they have time to make plenty of good decisions in the future. Seeing Johnny Cash here, at the end of his life, is straight up tragic. The way he sings it with so much emotion, the fantastic video showing his legacy and life. It's the most heart-breaking piece of media ever.

RIP Abhay Charan Lerra. You were a good friend and father. ❤️💯 Much love brother. I hope to see you soon one day.

Im a 13 year old boy, and I have always admired Johnny Cash, and in all my heart I say that I can just see the pain in this poor mans heart, and when I say I cried, I mean I really cried hard. You can see this poor mans pain, and it really hurts to see a fine gentleman like Johnny Cash suffer with pain. I was raised around both my mother, and my grandpa, and being around my grandpa taught me about hundreds of amazing song writers and legends, and one of those ledgends would be a Man In Black, Johnny Cash.

Hearing Cash refer to all of his wealth and fortune as an “empire of dirt” really hits you right in the soul

9 Inch Nails "Hurt": A man slowly losing his mind wanting to die. Cash's "Hurt": A tired old man who is ready to die.

GREATEST REMAKE SONG EVER!

This came out a month before my dad was diagnosed with a terminal neurological degenerative brain disease called FTD, he loves Johnny Cash

I read that Cash felt that a year after his death, the world would have forgotten about his music and his life... 169 million views... RIP, Sir...

I'm 71... this song makes me cry like a baby.... the closer you get to The End. The more profound this song becomes...😢

Jonny, Merle, Conway, Waylon, George Jones, Charlie Daniels and Don Williams are frickin legends 👏 and Rip 🙏 to all of them!!!!!

An old man facing his end, looking back at everything he’s ever done, knowing he’s gonna die soon. Such a sad song...

One of my father's favorite performers. Rest in Peace Dad ( August 1st 1939 - March 9th 2022 ). HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD.....August 1st 2022.

i remember my sister basically forcing me to get in her car because she wanted to show me a song. The only time in my life this happened. She was a huge NIN fan and i was kind of a fan due to my proximity to her. I wasn''t a country fan and definitely not a johnny cash fan. We threw this song on and I was struck at tis beauty. I still listen to it all these years later.

"I will keep myself". most important words. never sell yourself.

This was quite literally Cash's final farewell song to the world. It was filmed in February 2003. His wife, June Cash (seen in the video at 2:34), died 3 months after this video was made in May 2003. Cash died just 4 months after his wife at the same hospital as his wife in September 12, 2003. At the time of this filming, Johnny Cash and his wife were both experiencing serious health problems. He surely spent a lot of time reflecting on his life and mortality during these painful times.

it’s beautiful that this song was originally sang by a young man who was searching for himself that was just beginning life, and was then covered by a man at the end of his life looking back at his accomplishments and wishing he could go back. truly beautiful, and truly one of the greatest covers of a song ever.

We are all victims of the time.

Rest in Peace, Johnny. Thanks for your beautiful Songs. I will keep them in m'y mind.

I love this version. It’s just a man at the end of his life singing about what it’s like to be human. The truth in this song speaks to my soul. Such a great version.

The way his voice and hands shake, and the pain in his eyes, oh boy it gets me

"That song isn't mine anymore." ~Trent. Respect 100. I am an old 90s goth kid so naturally Trent is well known to me. My grandmother also always (kindly) called me the man in black because of said gothness, and her fondness for Mr. Cash. So when this "cover" arrived, I was moved.

Dear Sir >Thank you

Trent wrote this song from the perspective of a young man battling to keep control of his life over his drug addiction. Johnny sung this song from the perspective of an old man who has battled his whole life with drug addiction, and the mountain of pain/guilt/regret it's caused. I like both perspectives of the same painful struggle, but God this version makes me cry.

Sad fact: Johnny died a few months after the death of his wife of 34 years, and his stepdaughter died one month after. They are all buried together.

"Hurt" from God is a profound blessing. It has changed me. So much.

What a man. What a legend still listening to you Cash in 2024

Im not too much of an emotional person but wow. This song just had me blubbering. Watching a man near the end of his life coming to truly accept the worthlessness of worldly things just hits me.

even in 2020, we still miss you, Johnny.

The best mic drop of all times.

U have to look back to learn To move Forward RIP Mr. Johnny Cash

"Everyone I know goes away in the end." That line hits the hardest.

RIP Mr. Cash 1932 - 2003 Your music and memory will live on forever and ever.😔

A dying man in an empty house, sitting at a table covered in dead things. IMHO there's never been a more powerful video than this. How often in the realm of Hollywood or the music industry do we get a chance to look into the honest, raw, stark reality of someone's else's soul?

I normally do not care for covers but wow this one is the exception

Well, I didn't think I'd cry today but here we are.

Probably one of the greatest covers ever made.

Johnny would be surprised and thrilled at the success of his cover of Trent Reznor’s masterpiece. He did it his way and it was marvelous. Thank you Trent and Johnny.

Can’t get through this song without getting choked up. Never has someone so completely owned a cover song like Johnny did here.

What hurts the most was the fact that Cash was ready to leave, the tiredness of his voice says it all.

When this song come out 20 years ago, it didn’t make sense, but now I totally get it.

I'm an alcoholic and recently got my PhD in the science field, and no one in my family has been to college. My father didn't graduate high school. Everyone in my family is either fucked up, on drugs, scarred from abuse or in prison. My father died of cancer while I was getting my education and I went back to his house to settle the estate and walking around the property as Cash does in this video hits in a way. I've been listening to this song for decades since Trent wrote it and as you get older life has a way of washing over you that is profound and unique in it's own relativity.

" Everyone I know goes away in the end" This song is so brutally honest and depressing but beautiful at the same time. Love it.

I honestly think Johnny knew his time was coming to an end soon when he agreed to do a cover of this song. So much of him is in it. Raw emotion, longing, regret, and yes, hurt. Whenever I need to feel sad (and yes, sometimes you need to, it's a healthy emotion) I listen to this song. Strangely, it also makes me feel better to know that someone else looked back over their life and acknowledged the roads both taken and not taken and the regret that causes. Rest in Peace, Mr. Cash. You are sorely missed. I sincerely hope that you are in a better, happier place with June. 😢

I been listening to this song and crying to this song since I was a teenager. Classic

Johnny just felt things deeper than most folks

My Grandpa died a few weeks ago. Johnny was mine and his favourite to listen to together. I said my final goodbyes to him, got in my car and drove aimlessly with this song blasting. Uncontrollable tears, but a part of me knew that he had lived a good life. Much like you can tell Johnny had lived and it was his time. Johnny will always take me to a place where I'll always feel close to my Grandpa. We'll meet again Gramps.

Singing up until the day he died. He is incomparable.

I'm not afraid of dying, I have FIBROMYALGIA and I live in pain everyday and I believe the day I die I will FINALLY be RELEASED from my EARTHLY PRISON.

Man, this is just so moving. I have watched it many times and it always reduces me to tears. R.I.P Johnny Cash.

This isn't a song . This is something beyond just music. This is the representation of an broken down Soul

Cash's version touches a man to the core...

2024. Most honest song there has ever been. The lyrics alone tell a tale of regret, shame and failure... for a man who, the world saw, as a legend and always will be. His own self worth is at question, so humbling. "I hurt myself today, to see if i still feel. I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real" - numb to success, grief, drama. "The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting" - used to be an abusive user but now on iv and drips. It's sad man, what success does to people

Trent Reznor says about the Cash version of Hurt: "I'd been friends with Rick Rubin for several years. He called me to ask how I'd feel if Johnny Cash covered Hurt. I said I'd be very flattered but was given no indication it would actually be recorded. The idea sounded a bit gimmicky. Two weeks went by. Then I got a CD in the post. I listened to it and it was very strange. It was this other person inhabiting my most personal song. I'd known where I was when I wrote it. I know what I was thinking about. I know how I felt. Hearing it was like someone kissing your girlfriend. It felt invasive". Johnny played this song over 100 times before he recorded it. He called it "The best anti-drug song I ever heard." The song was released as a single in 2003. "One Hour Photo" director Mark Romanek said: “I begged Rick Rubin to let me shoot something to that track” being instantly enamored of the rendition, he offered to shoot the video for free. Universal eventually agreed to the music video, but with 71-year-old Cash’s health declining and being unwilling to stay long in the cold Tennessee weather as he was going on holiday to his ranch in Jamaica that coming Saturday, Romanek had only days to make the video and after scouting in Nashville, he decided upon Cash’s home and museum in Hendersonville, Tennessee, The House of Cash. "Arriving on Friday with no idea of what I was going to make" Romanek said. "I looked around the house and made a few suggestions of where we might film Johnny performing. I was making it up off the top of my head. Then I went to the House of Cash Museum and found it in total disrepair. There was no time to clean it up so I decided that I'd just film it, and Johnny, exactly as they were. He was no longer in his prime - he was fading and that was what I wanted to show. The place was in such a state of dereliction. That’s when I got the idea that maybe we could be extremely candid about the state of Johnny’s health - as candid as Johnny has always been in his songs. While I was filming the opening segment of Johnny playing guitar in his living room, his wife, June, came down the stairs and watched. The look on her face was so complex: full of love and pride and concern for her husband. So I asked her if I could film her too and she agreed. But the most important element was when we discovered a film archive in the museum. When we looked back at the rushes we'd filmed at the house we thought they were good but not great. But once we dropped in the archive footage of Johnny we realized that was the soul of the video. The whole thing was so spontaneous. It's made me realize that sometimes you can be too prepared and that there's some value to urgency." The music video speaks about the transience of life, the gracelessness of death, the Ozymandian crumbling of an oeuvre and the decline of a genre, an era and an attitude. The ‘closed to public’ sign on the museum. The cracked platinum records. The caviar and lobster banquet with no diners. The clips from earlier in Johnny’s career. His wife June looking on. The closed piano lid. The video was so intimate that Cash's management didn't think it should be released, and Johnny was leaning in that direction. According to Rick Rubin, it was his daughter, Rosanne Cash, who convinced Johnny to let it go. June died May 15th, 2003, three months after filming, Johnny died September 12, 2003 four months after his wife. Rick Rubin said of the video: “I cried the first time I saw it. If you were moved to that kind of emotion in the course of a two-hour movie, it would be a great accomplishment. To do it in a four-minute music video is shocking. I think the hurt video is a historical document, it's like looking back across a life." Trent Reznor was sent the video while in the studio with Rage Against the Machine’s Zach De La Rocha, and, when the pair sat down to watch it, any doubts he had about the cover were long gone. “We were in the studio, getting ready to work and I popped it in,” said Reznor. "Tears started welling up. I realized it wasn't really my song anymore. It just gave me goose bumps up and down my spine. By the end I was really on the verge of tears…there was just dead silence. There was, like, this moist clearing of our throats and then, ‘Uh, okay, let’s get some coffee.' It really, really made sense and I thought what a powerful piece of art. I never got to meet Johnny but I'm happy I contributed the way I did. It felt like a warm hug. It's an unbelievably powerful piece of work. After he passed away I remember feeling saddened, but being honored to have framed the end of his life in something that is very tasteful. For anyone who hasn't seen it, I highly recommend checking it out. I have goose bumps right now thinking about it. Having Johnny Cash, one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, want to cover your song, that's something that matters to me. It's not so much what other people think, but the fact that this guy felt that it was worthy of interpreting. " by Cody Flanagan

Your listening to a man that knows his days are numbered and it’s reflecting on what it all means

He'll definitely be remembered for a song he didn't want to make! (Like us all, for our nature, not our vanity?)

He knew that his time was limited. This was his goodbye.

The fact an old man sitting on a chair singing about sad things in life makes me fucking cry ...

In this video, Johnny Cash is seen in the cab of a steam locomotive, specifically Southern #4501. That same locomotive still exists and runs in the Tennessee Valley today out of Chattanooga.

Trent said himself that Hurt is Johnny's song which proves how talented he was. R.I.P Johnny Cash, you will be missed.

Everyone else feels like they’ve just lived an entire lifetime of sadness in nearly 4 minutes

The fact he died shortly after covering this masterpiece is a blessed ending to a blessed life. You can see in his and his wife's eyes they know. Man went out with a bang. Truly the champion. R.i.p Cash

Back in the early nineties when i was about 13 My mom and I stoped in at a little restobar for lunch, My mom brought me to sit with a man and she introduced him to me and said " this is Johnny cash, he's a great artist" being young and dum at the time, I didnt have a clue who he was and the chance that I had got to meet this person!! Its only years later, that I discovered him At the time I used to listen to nine inch nails, hurt was always one of my favorites!! When I herd cash sign it for the first time I was confused, I was certain that it was his song! Now that I'm older this version is my favorite Wish I could go back to that day,

Johnny Cash was sincerely telling a story. We want someone to listen and not go down that path. And yet we find ourselves repeating

One of a kind. People say Elvis was king. Johnny was Eternal

i like the line "you can have it all, my empire of dirt." Its shows no matter how much material wealth you acquire, it doesn't mean anything at the end of your life.

A great Nine Inch Nails song, Johnny Cash took it and made it his own, to another level.

Don't judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes

My 3 song stages of cowboy moods: 1: Big Iron 2: Country Roads 3: Hurt

When I hear Trent Reznor’s version, I hear pain and self-loathing. When I hear Johnny Cash’s version, I hear looking back at the end of life with regrets.

Rip to the man in black.......nothing will ever make me feel like this song does.....😢 we love you cash.....

One of those rare occasions when the video truly enhances the song and takes it to a much higher level. The poignancy of a legendary musician at the end of his life, perfectly conveyed.

When he closes the piano and caresses it at the end, it's a very special moment. Thank you Johnny for all the music.

"Trust gets you killed, love gets you hurt and being real gets you hated."-Johnny Cash. R.I.P to one of the realest man we've known.

JOHNNY CASH SONG FOR AMERICA SOUL😇🎸

This man has fame, money, everything but yet he feels pain as he grows. This is what I believe to be the human curse.

Doesn’t matter if he’s 20 or 70, he’s got the best voice in country history

R.I.P. Johnny Cash. This version, with how close to his death it was and with how much experience it's sung, gives that song a really special feel to it.

Mr.Cash was much more than a singer, he was an Existential Poet, an Iconic Legend who suffered much... Through his music & Lyrics, he channeled/"exorcised" his life filled with hurts & pains. There was a lesson to be learned in each and everyone of his songs. Thank you Mr.Cash for the genuine and authentic person that you were. May you rest in peace wherever you may be. 💐💜🖤

How a song can have a completely different meaning depending upon who sings it.