The Man Comes Around

The Man Comes Around is the sixty-seventh studio album by Johnny Cash, released in November 2002 on American Recordings, the final album of original recordings Cash completed before his death in September 2003, and the album that contains his cover of Nine Inch Nails' 'Hurt,' one of the most celebrated music videos ever made. Cash wrote the title track, 'The Man Comes Around,' a biblical narrative drawn from the Book of Revelation that Cash worked on for years and considered one of his most important compositions, alongside a set of covers that includes 'Hurt' (Nine Inch Nails), 'Desperado' (Eagles), 'Personal Jesus' (Depeche Mode), 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' (Paul Simon), and 'We'll Meet Again' (Vera Lynn). Trent Reznor has said that Cash's video interpretation of 'Hurt', directed by Mark Romanek and featuring Cash at age 70 surrounded by the physical detritus of a long life, supplanted his own original as the definitive version of the song; the video won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Cinematography and was nominated for Video of the Year. Cash died on September 12, 2003, four months after the death of his wife June Carter Cash, making The Man Comes Around a genuine farewell document of a career spanning five decades. The album reached number 22 on the Billboard 200 and has been certified double platinum in the United States; 'Hurt' remains one of the most streamed and viewed recordings in Cash's entire catalog.