Unchained

Unchained is the sixty-fourth studio album by Johnny Cash, released in November 1996 on American Recordings and produced by Rick Rubin, the second album in the American Recordings series, featuring full-band recordings with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as the backing ensemble alongside additional session musicians, and expanding the acoustic solo framework of the debut into a more sonically varied electric context. Cash co-wrote one track and covered songs by Tom Petty ('Southern Accents'), Beck ('Rowboat'), Dean Martin ('That Lucky Old Sun'), and Josh Haden ('Spiritual'), continuing the curatorial approach that treated outside songwriting as raw material for Cash's interpretive identity. The album includes Cash's cover of Soundgarden's 'Rusty Cage', a high-energy full-band performance that demonstrated his ability to inhabit post-grunge rock material with the same authority he brought to traditional folk and gospel, and 'Memories Are Made of This' (from the Dean Martin era), reflecting the temporal range of the American Recordings curation. Unchained won the Grammy for Best Country Album in 1998, a recognition that generated the famous advertisement Rubin placed in Billboard magazine featuring Cash's middle-finger photograph with the caption 'American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support.' The album confirmed that the American Recordings series represented a genuine critical and commercial rehabilitation rather than a novelty.