WEBVTT
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Callaroga Shark Media. I'm Garrett Fischer, and this is the
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Hit Maker Chronicles. We've reached the end of our countdown.
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Over the past nine weeks, we've explored the greatest cover
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songs of all time. Songs that transformed the originals, Songs
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that became more famous than the versions that came first,
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Songs that shifted perspectives and changed meanings and became cultural touchstones.
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We've seen Bob Dylan acknowledged that Jimmy Hendrix understood his
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song better than he did. We've seen Aretha Franklin turn
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a man's plea into a woman's demand. We've seen artists
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take songs and make them unrecognizable, make them their own,
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make them immortal. But there's one cover that stands above
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all the others, one cover that's so powerful, so transformative,
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so emotionally devastating that the person who wrote it said
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publicly that the song no longer belonged to him, that
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when he heard the cover, he felt like he was
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listening to someone else's song, even though he'd written every word.
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Hurt by Johnny Cash, the most powerful cover song ever recorded,
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Number one on our countdown. Let me start by telling
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you about the original. In nineteen ninety four, Trent Resner
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was twenty nine years old and one of the most
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important figures in industrial rock. His band Nine Inch Nails
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had released Pretty Hate Machine in nineteen eighty nine and
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Broken in nineteen ninety two, and he was working on
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what would become The Downward Spiral, an album about self destruction, addiction, nihilism,
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and the complete dissolution of the self. Trent wrote Hurt
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at the end of the Downward Spiral sessions. The album
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had been a journey into darkness, songs about degradation, rage, despair.
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Hurt was meant to be the emotional culmination, the moment
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where the protagonist of the album looks at but he's
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become and realizes he's destroyed everything. The song is sung
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from the perspective of someone who's hurt everyone around them,
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whose used self destruction as a coping mechanism, who's numb
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themselves to the point where they can't feel anything real anymore.
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It's about looking in the mirror and not recognizing the
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person looking back. It's about the realization that you can't
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undo the damage you've done. Trent's version of Hurt is
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sparse for a nine Inch Nail song. Quiet piano, minimal percussion,
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layers of atmospheric sound, and Trent's voice, thin and desperate,
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singing about trying to feel something, anything through the numbness.
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The production builds slowly. By the end, there's distortion, noise, chaos,
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the quiet desperation giving way to overwhelming darkness. It's one
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of the most emotionally raw songs Trent ever wrote. The
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Downward Spiral came out in March nineteen ninety four. It
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was a critical and commercial success. Hurt wasn't released as
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a single. It was the final track on the album,
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the emotional endpoint, but fans and critics recognized it as
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one of Trent's most powerful compositions, and that's where the
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song might have stayed. A deep album cut, an important
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song for nine Inch Nails fans, a piece of nineties
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industrial rock history. But eight years later, Johnny Cash heard it.
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Johnny was seventy years old. He'd been a giant in
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country music for four decades. He'd had hits in the fifties, sixties,
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and seventies. He'd been to prison folsome san Quentin, had
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struggled with addiction, had lost friends, had made comebacks, had
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been written off and resurrected more times than anyone could count.
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By two thousand and two, Johnny was near the end.
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His health was failing. He had autonomic neuropathy, a condition
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that affected his nervous system. He could barely walk, his
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hands shook, his voice wasn't what it used to be,
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but he was still making music. Producer Rick Rubin had
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signed Johnny to his American Recordings label in the mid
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nineties and had been guiding him through a series of
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albums that stripped away all the Nashville production and got
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back to basics, just Johnny and a guitar, raw, honest,
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no pretense. Rick Rubin played Johnny Hurt, and Johnny understood
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immediately what he could do with it. Because while Trent
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Resner had written Hurt about a young man destroying himself
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through addiction and self hatred, Johnny Cash could sing it
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about a seventy year old man looking back at his
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entire life and seeing all the pain he'd caused, all
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the people he'd hurt, all the mistakes he couldn't undo.
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Same lyrics, completely different, meaning. Johnny recorded Hurt in two
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thousand and two for American four. The Man Comes Around
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the arrangement was completely different from Trent's version. No industrial noise,
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no distortion, just piano, acoustic guitar strings that came in
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slowly building emotion, and Johnny's voice, old, weathered, shaking in places,
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not trying to hit every note perfectly, just trying to
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get through the song, to tell the truth about what
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it felt like to be at the end and look
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back at everything you'd done wrong. When Johnny sang about
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everyone he knew going away in the end, he wasn't
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being nihilistic like Trent. He was being literal. His friends
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were dying, His wife June was sick. He was dying.
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Everyone he'd known for decades was leaving or had already left.
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When he sang about his empire of dirt, he wasn't
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talking about the psychological decay of addiction. He was talking
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about legacy, about realizing that all the success, all the fame,
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all the achievements didn't matter when you were facing the end.
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The recording session was difficult. Johnny could barely get through
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the song, his voice kept breaking, but Rick Rubin understood
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that the imperfections were the point. This wasn't about technical perfection.
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This was about an old man confessing. The album came
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out in November two thousand and three. Hurt was released
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as a single, and then the music video came out.
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Director Mark Romonik shot the video at the house of Cash,
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Johnny's museum in Hendersonville, Tennessee. The museum was falling apart,
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water damage, neglect, things literally crumbling. The video shows Johnny
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sitting at a piano, barely able to play. It shows
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his hand shaking, It shows his face ravaged by age
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and illness. It shows June Carter Cash watching him from
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across the room, and this is crucial, looking at him
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with love and worry, knowing he's dying. The video intercuts
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footage of young Johnny from the nineteen sixties with the
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old man he'd become. It shows his museum full of
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costumes and gold, records and memorabilia, all of it decaying
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his empire of dirt, and throughout the vis video, Johnny
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sings not with power, not with the voice that had
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made him famous, with whatever voice he had left, trying
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to get through it, trying to tell the truth before
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he ran out of time. When the video premiered on
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MTV in February two thousand and three, people couldn't look away.
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It was devastating. It was one of the most powerful
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music videos ever made, not because of special effects or
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narrative complexity, but because you were watching a man face
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his own mortality on camera. June Carter Cash, Johnny's wife
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of thirty five years, died in May two thousand and three.
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Johnny Cash died four months later in September two thousand
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and three. The video four Hurt became his epitaph, his
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final statement, his confession, and his goodbye. And Trent Reznor,
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watching all of this said something that's become one of
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the most famous quotes about cover songs. I popped the
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video in and Wow, tears welling, silent, goosebumps. Wow, I
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felt like I just lost my girlfriend because that song
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isn't mine anymore. We'll be right back. Let me talk
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about what makes Johnny Cash's version of Hurt the greatest
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cover song of all time. It's not just that it's
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emotionally powerful. Lots of covers are emotionally powerful. It's not
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just that Johnny transformed the meaning of the song. We've
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seen that throughout this countdown. It's that Johnny's version of
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Hurt represents the absolute pinnacle of what a cover can achieve.
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It takes a song about one thing and makes it
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about something completely different while honoring the original. It proves
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that the same lyrics can mean entirely different things depending
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on who's singing them and when they're singing them. When
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Trent Resner wrote Hurt, he was twenty nine years old
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and drowning. The song was about self destruction, about trying
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to feel anything through the numbness of addiction and depression.
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It was about a young man who'd heard everyone around
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him and couldn't find a way to stop. When Johnny
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Cash sang it, he was seventy years old and dying.
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The song became about regret, about looking back at a
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long life and seeing all the pain you caused, all
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the people you lost, all the things you can't fix.
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It became about mortality. Those are completely different emotional territories,
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but the song works for both. That's the mark of
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great songwriting that it can contain multiple meanings, that different
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people can find different truths in it. And that's the
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mark of a great cover that it can find a
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meaning the original artist didn't even know was there. The
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music video is what elevated Johnny's version from a great
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cover to the greatest cover of all time because the
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video doesn't just illustrate the song, it provides contexts that transformed.
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When you watch Johnny struggle through the song, when you
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see his hand shaking, when you see June watching him
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with that mixture of love and grief, when you see
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the museum falling apart around him, you understand that this
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isn't a performance. This is a confession. This is a
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man facing the end and trying to tell the truth
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about what it feels like. The juxtaposition of young Johnny
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and old Johnny is devastating. You see this vital, powerful
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man in his prime, and then you see what time
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and illness have done to him. You see his empire
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of dirt literally crumbling around him, and you understand that
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he knows, he knows this is the end. He knows
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June is dying. He knows he's dying, and he's trying
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to say something true before it's too late. That's why
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people couldn't look away from the video. That's why it
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became an instant classic. That's why it's been viewed hundreds
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of millions of times. Because you're not watching an actor
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you're watching the real thing. After Johnny died, Hurt became
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something even bigger. It became his legacy. When people talk
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about Johnny Cash, they talk about the outlaw years, the
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prison albums, the comebacks, but they also talk about Hurt.
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They talk about the courage it took to record that
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song when he was so close to death. They talk
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about the video, They talk about how he transformed a
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nine inch nail song into his own final statement, and
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Trent Resner, who wrote the song, has been incredibly gracious
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about it. He said that hearing Johnny's version was humbling,
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that it made him understand his own song differently, that
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Johnny had found something in it that Trent didn't know
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was there. Trent has also said that he can't perform
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Hurt the same way anymore. When he plays it live,
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he thinks about Johnny's version. He thinks about what it
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meant for Johnny to sing those words at the end
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of his life, and it changes how Trent approaches his
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own song. That's the ultimate acknowledgment, the person who wrote
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the song saying, you understood it better than I did.
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You made it yours. It belongs to you now. Over
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the past nine weeks, we've seen that theme again and again,
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Dylan performing All Along the Watchtower the way Jimmy arranged it,
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otis reading, acknowledging that respect became Aretha's prince, giving away
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nothing Compares to You, and watching Sinead make it eternal.
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But Hurt is different because Trent didn't just acknowledge that
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Johnny's version was good. He said the song wasn't his anymore.
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He said he'd lost it, like losing someone you love.
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That's the power of a truly transcendent cover. It doesn't
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just reinterpret, it transforms so completely that even the person
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who created the original feels like they're hearing it for
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the first time. Hurt is number one on our countdown
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because it represents everything a cover song can be. It's
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a technical transformation, taking industrial rock and turning it into
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country folk. It's an emotional transformation, taking a young man's
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nihilism and turning it into an old man's regret. It's
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a cultural transformation, taking an album track from a nine
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inch Nails record and turning it into one of the
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most important recordings in American music. And it's a human
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transformation because when you listen to Johnny Cash sing Hurt,
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You're not just hearing a cover of a nine inch
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nail song. You're hearing a man face his own death
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with honesty and courage. You're hearing someone who's lived seventy
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years look back at all of it, the glory and
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the shame, the love and the loss, the success and
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the failure, and try to make sense of it all.
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That's not entertainment. That's art at its most essential. That's
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a human being using music to tell the truth about
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what it means to be human. Trent Resner wrote a
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powerful song about self destruction at twenty nine. Johnny Cash
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turned it into a meditation on mortality at seventy, and
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in doing so, he created the greatest cover song of
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all time. Same words, different man, different meaning, different universe.
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This is Garrett Fisher and this is the Hit Maker Chronicles.
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Thank you for joining us for our countdown of the
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top ten best cover songs of all time, as voted
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by the staff at Kalaroga Shark Media. From mad World
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to Hurt, from Transformation to transcend It, we've explored what
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happens when artists take someone else's song and make it
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their own, and sometimes if they're lucky. If they're brave enough,
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if they're honest enough, they make it better than it
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ever was before.