s0nicfan posted...
I'm not sure how you can call the cover soulless, especially the music video, unless you were completely unaware of the backstory behind the cover.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/the-story-behind-johnny-cash-s-
hurt-still-the-saddest-music-video-of-all-time-a6683371.html
You really owe yourself giving this cover a second chance, and I highly recommend you do it by watching the music video. The pain on Cash's face is way too real to be acting and it should completely eliminate any part of your thought process that would call it soulless.
https://youtu.be/8AHCfZTRGiI
Edit: the tldr in case somebody doesn't want to read that link is that the music video was filmed in the derelict and abandoned Johnny Cash museum which also happened to be his childhood home, and cash himself was dying when they filmed it, as was his wife who only died a couple months after filming. The man is literally sitting in the abandoned remains of his legacy knowing that none of it will help him and it adds such overwhelming depth to the song and the lyrics in the context of those scenes.
tbh this hurts your case more than helps it
trent composed the downward spiral while nursing a drug addiction, listening to david bowie's scary monsters on loop, locked in the basement of the mansion where the charles manson cult murdered sharon tate, and any "pig" reference on the album is likely b/c of the "PIG" scrawled in blood on the door of the home (which IIRC he kept and used as the door to his studio for nothing records)
does any of this really influence how you listen to hurt/the downward spiral? is it necessary to know these things to have understanding sonically/lyrically of the emotion/intent behind the lyrics/composition of the album/each track individually?
i fuckin hope not. if you need external information (or a music video) to understand the feel of a song, the writer failed imo.
and that's the cash cover in a nutshell. it's compositionally boring, and its lyrics (even with cash's changes, and considering his life/music video) are a stretch to unite to what you've written tbh. who is the "you" he's addressing? (which is the same "
you
" trent addressed the entire album, btw). who did he let down, who did he hurt? and the transposition from crown of "shit" to crown of "thorns"? lol. it's laughably bad.
i'm not trying to say trent is a lyrical genius. tbh i
dislike
most of his lyrics and think he's a bad writer (
lyrically anyways).
what trent is
good
at is making you understand the emotion behind his shitty lyrics through his music. like prime example. the track listing of that album follows 12 - reptile, 13 - the downward spiral, 14- hurt.
reptile is
extremely
aggressive and mean. it's probably the most explicitly, externally angry track on the album. it is a 100%
fuck you
(i love you, but)
fuck you, you
whore
the next track is the downward spiral, which starts off relatively somber w/ a motif that's repeated throughout the album (same as the ending notes to closer, which i was once told is a motif lifted from german opera signifying "death", but idk the veracity of). it then moves to a distorted refrain, which is later featured in the chorus of hurt. and then
again
to the aforementioned motif, accompanied by muted and discordant, unintelligible screaming. the next track is
hurt
. like i said earlier, i don't particularly like "hurt" as a song, regardless of artist. but without the context of the prior songs on the album(which tbh a
cover artist
cannot provide), it lacks of lot of depth. and no i do not feel this is logically inconsistent w/ my earlier argument b/c a music (promotional) video for a song is wholly different from prior songs on an album during a period when albums as a whole were gaining recognition (as opposed to singles).
the NIN version even standalone transitions from a discordant, distorted guitar, to uplifting refrain. the drumming varies in beat/intensity, the singing from whisper to cry. and it all ends on a wall of sound that conveys complete uncertainty.
the cash version is just an alt-pop ballad in comparison.