American Recordings - Johnny Cash (1994)

ideated from: 1994 being the best year in music history

Legacy “dinosaur” artists were having a rough time of it in the mid-90s. The industry was shifting to a new generation of trendsetters and while these older artists still had lots of fans, those fans were hard to sell new material to. There were lots of box set compilations and remasters of old catalog, but if you were going to make new music you had to make some tough choices: seek relevance with younger audiences by employing more modern productions and arrangements (done to varying degrees of success) or keep doing what you’ve been doing and hope people will choose it over your old catalog (basically competing against your own legacy; again, sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t)

Johnny Cash never liked to be locked into anything. He got together with producer Rick Rubin and they concocted an amazing new chapter for Cash. A songbook of classic tunes as well as more modern, unexpected choices that showed his exceptionally wide and impeccable taste in music and his continued engagement with the world. Stark solo acoustic arrangements to showcase what everyone who listens to Cash wants: that amazing, one-of-a-kind voice. No dance remixes, no duets with younger artists, no orchestral arrangements (tbf that one would come soon)

There’s one of those box set retrospectives of Cash called “Love, God, Murder” with one disc dedicated to each topic, and that sums Cash up pretty well. You get doses of each of those main topics on this record. It’s a perfect reintroduction to a new generation of potential fans without sounding pandering. There’s also plenty of what had always made Cash great, so there was no reason for existing fans not to embrace it. The perfect solution for the difficult question of the music industry at the time.

Tracks I Liked

Delia’s Gone - a dead-eyed murder confession

Thirteen - the best version of a Danzig song?

Bird On A Wire - Leonard Cohen classic