the music video that almost wasn't
Jan. 10th, 2024 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaok so we all know Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt", right? and Nine Inch Nails's original version of the song? if not, congrats, you are one of today's lucky 10,000 & you're going to have an excellent next ~10 minutes of your life, please click & click & enjoy (and—make sure you actually watch the music video for the Cash version, it's kind of relevant)
i was thinking about it recently because—well, i had never listened to the NIN original until earlier this week actually, haha, and holy shit! it fucking rules so hard? i was worried it would sound, like, i dunno... a little juvenile, a little whiny in that specific way that usually vibes with teenagers, but. turns out it's just an incredibly good song. (the whole album is really good fwiw.)
it's good and, imo, much more sonically sophisticated/interesting than Cash's cover. NIN's original is sparse, same as Cash—but the singer is doing these incredible horrible unsettling breathy moves with his voice, twisting through all these subtly different textures—despairing to sneering to deranged to anguished—and often twisting through them mid-syllable. and the instrumentation, while spare, is simply doing a lot more than Cash's—the wafty-windy-distorted sound in the background, the piano in the chorus, are Exactly What They Need To Be.
but like. the music video is really what pushes Cash's "Hurt" over the edge, right. like—if i'd just been listening to Cash's "Hurt" the first time, all on its own, without the accompanying video, i probably would've been like "yeah that was good" but i wouldn't have been floored the way i was. Cash's voice has an intrinsic raggedness and gravitas that does lend some weight to the song no matter what, but the delivery feels a bit too straightforward and flat—particularly if you're listening to it back-to-back against the original, which has SO much moody intensity—and the instrumentation in Cash's version is not just spare but bland. the piano swells in the chorus in Cash's version feel not just predictable but a little bit schmaltzy.
but like. the music video is really what really pushes Cash's "Hurt" over the edge, right. i think it's pretty hard to grow up in the US—or at least, my little corner of the US—without the Cash mythos at least vaguely hovering over you. so seeing the "I Walk The Line" guy looking so old and tired, flashing back to all these younger days, singing with his wife Back In The Day & his wife hovering anxiously over him in the present, the southern-gothic-grandeur of where he sits... whuft. it's on the nose, sure, but so well-done it doesn't matter.
and—this is the part that gets me, the reason i'm writing this whole post—i found this bit from the "making of" story for the video so surprising:
props to that editor; dude had The Correct Instinct. but i'm also a little staggered that that wasn't the plan the whole time lol. weird to think about how if they'd just decided "eh good enough as-is" or hadn't gone bumbling around in the archival footage... creative processes are wild, man, i can't imagine making that video without that being the idea the whole time, but it's easy to say that in hindsight...!
i was thinking about it recently because—well, i had never listened to the NIN original until earlier this week actually, haha, and holy shit! it fucking rules so hard? i was worried it would sound, like, i dunno... a little juvenile, a little whiny in that specific way that usually vibes with teenagers, but. turns out it's just an incredibly good song. (the whole album is really good fwiw.)
it's good and, imo, much more sonically sophisticated/interesting than Cash's cover. NIN's original is sparse, same as Cash—but the singer is doing these incredible horrible unsettling breathy moves with his voice, twisting through all these subtly different textures—despairing to sneering to deranged to anguished—and often twisting through them mid-syllable. and the instrumentation, while spare, is simply doing a lot more than Cash's—the wafty-windy-distorted sound in the background, the piano in the chorus, are Exactly What They Need To Be.
but like. the music video is really what pushes Cash's "Hurt" over the edge, right. like—if i'd just been listening to Cash's "Hurt" the first time, all on its own, without the accompanying video, i probably would've been like "yeah that was good" but i wouldn't have been floored the way i was. Cash's voice has an intrinsic raggedness and gravitas that does lend some weight to the song no matter what, but the delivery feels a bit too straightforward and flat—particularly if you're listening to it back-to-back against the original, which has SO much moody intensity—and the instrumentation in Cash's version is not just spare but bland. the piano swells in the chorus in Cash's version feel not just predictable but a little bit schmaltzy.
but like. the music video is really what really pushes Cash's "Hurt" over the edge, right. i think it's pretty hard to grow up in the US—or at least, my little corner of the US—without the Cash mythos at least vaguely hovering over you. so seeing the "I Walk The Line" guy looking so old and tired, flashing back to all these younger days, singing with his wife Back In The Day & his wife hovering anxiously over him in the present, the southern-gothic-grandeur of where he sits... whuft. it's on the nose, sure, but so well-done it doesn't matter.
and—this is the part that gets me, the reason i'm writing this whole post—i found this bit from the "making of" story for the video so surprising:
Rick Rubin (producer): Johnny [Cash], he had a little finite window of time he could make the video at home and Mark said well I'll just figure something out. Mark was concerned about, you know, if it works out that all I do is have him well-lit in a chair, singing the song, he said I don't know if that's going to be enough to carry the video, and I'm not sure what I'm gonna do.what!!! they didn't think they were going to use the archival footage!!!
Mark Romanek (director): As we were touring the House of Cash museum, they said, you know, here's the film storage room where stacks and stacks of film cans and all of Johnny's television shows and all of his films, anything that had ever been shot was in this room. But I didn't think we were gonna use it. So we cut together the video using the performances of Johnny and the stuff in the House of Cash, and it was good, it was pretty good. And we said, well, maybe we should look at this archival stuff, see what the hell we have in these boxes. And we pulled out something and loaded it up in the computer and I think it happened to be that image of Johnny riding the train, and my editor Robert Duffy, literally somewhat randomly dropped it into the cut and we got chills right up our spines, it was something about the juxtaposition of Johnny as a young vibrant man and Johnny towards the end of his life that was... we knew something really powerful was going on there.
props to that editor; dude had The Correct Instinct. but i'm also a little staggered that that wasn't the plan the whole time lol. weird to think about how if they'd just decided "eh good enough as-is" or hadn't gone bumbling around in the archival footage... creative processes are wild, man, i can't imagine making that video without that being the idea the whole time, but it's easy to say that in hindsight...!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-12 03:04 pm (UTC)It's so interesting how each version speaks to completely different life experiences. This is such a good song.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-16 09:53 pm (UTC)