Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt never should have worked. Even Cash had his doubts at first. “When I heard the record, I said: ‘I can’t do that song. It’s not my style,” he said. But after four successful albums with Rick Rubin, he trusted the producer’s sometimes left-field instincts. Rubin had already introduced him to songs by Soundgarden and Tom Waits, and sensed that the Nine Inch Nails ballad Hurt might unlock something deeply personal in the singer. He told Cash: “Just read the lyrics. If you like the lyrics, then we’ll find a way to do it to suit you.”
The song that its writer Trent Reznor once called a “valentine to the sufferer” had some dark origins. In the early 90s, Reznor rented a house in LA’s Benedict Canyon that had once been owned by actress Sharon Tate and was the scene of her gruesome murder in 1969 by the Manson family. The faint outline of
