Johnny Cash - Hurt

What this video is

Released in early 2003 as the lead single from American IV: The Man Comes Around (November 2002, Lost Highway/Universal), the video captured Johnny Cash — then 71, in serious physical decline — performing a cover of Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails composition in the ruins of his own legacy. Filmed at his Hendersonville estate and the long-closed, derelict House of Cash museum, the video functions simultaneously as…

Why it matters

A watershed moment in both country music and music video history, 'Hurt' demonstrated that the music video format could function as genuine cinematic art and biographical document. By covering an industrial-rock song through a country-Americana lens, Cash and Romanek collapsed genre boundaries and…

The director

Mark Lee Romanek (born September 18, 1959) is an American film, music video, and commercial director. He is best known for directing One Hour Photo (2002) and Never Let Me Go (2010), and is widely regarded as one of the pre-eminent music video directors of…