“Hurt” by Trent Reznor is a haunting ballad filled with pain and pathos. Sung by the late Johnny Cash however, the song took on a level of depth and nuance that even the author of the song did not imagine. Cash’s version, accompanied by the music video which was Cash’s last living performance, not only enhances the haunting quality of Cash’s version, but the song also brings questions about the blending of visual media and music to emphasize a particular meaning that goes beyond the author’s original intent. Ultimately Cash’s version echo’s the writer of Ecclesiastes but with greater hope.
Reznor’s Version
On April 17, 1995 Trent Reznor, along with the band Nine Inch Nails released the song “Hurt” as a single. Alex Howlett quotes USA Today where Reznor revealed his depression while writing the album “The Downward Spiral” which features “Hurt”, “The palpable self-loathing in the song is part of a wider theme within Nine Inch Nails’ album from the time, The Downward Spiral: (Reznor) ‘I’m not proud to say I hate myself and don’t like what I am, but maybe there is real human communication that ends up positive even though everything being said is negative,’ Reznor told USA Today in 1994.”
The song’s lyrics themselves allude to desperation and drug use. “I hurt myself today to see if I still feel, I focus on the pain the only thing that’s real. The needle tears a hole the old familiar sting, try to kill it all away but I remember everything. And you can have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt.” The bleak picture Reznor paints is a possibly drug addicted person so helplessly lost to depression and their addiction that they are at the end of themselves. Reznor’s subject is both desperate and disgusted, resigned and angry at themselves. The line “I will let you down, I will make you hurt” is a statement that conveys Reznor’s irony at his predicament- he’s both hurting and someone who will hurt whomever attempts to help him by his failure. The “Hurt” in Reznor’s version is the realization that he will eventually disappoint anyone who tries to help him.
Cash’s Poignant Pain
Johnny Cash’s treatment of the same song makes it a soulful mourning of a life perhaps lived too long. Before we talk about how Cash’s version transforms the almost exact lyrics into something else entirely, we must recognize the incredible impact the music video that Cash recorded had on the nature of the song. Recorded in 2002 in a derelict museum dedicated to Cash himself the music video used memorabilia from Cash, movies and previous footage from Cash’s life, religious imagery as well as Cash’s soon to be deceased wife June. But the center of the video was Cash himself. Rather than attempt to gloss over Cash’s age and deteriorating health director Mark Romanek decided to highlight them, “I got the idea that maybe we could be extremely candid about the state of Johnny’s health — as candid as Johnny has always been in his songs.”
It is these factors more than any others that transform the song from a mournful ballad to something remarkable coming from Cash’s elderly voice. Ironically the song without the video failed to impress Reznor at all, “It sounded... weird to me. That song in particular was straight from my soul, and it felt very strange hearing the highly identifiable voice of Johnny Cash singing it.” With the visuals however the lyrics are transformed. Instead of a deeply troubled young man the song speaks of a tired old one. The drug use imagery changes from a troubled young man looking for a fix to an old man who resents his need for it. The inflicted “pain” goes from a numbness coming from depression to a numbness of simply having experienced too much pain for it to even register anymore. This ties into the chilling refrain that perhaps is transformed more than anything in Cash’s version, “What have I become? My sweetest friend everyone I know goes away in the end. And you can have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt.” In the video the camera lingers on June Cash as he sings “my sweetest friend” indicating implicitly (June died shortly after filming) “everyone I know goes away in the end”- a loss of friendship and even people at the end of life. Cash singing about an “empire of dirt” while surrounded by memorabilia, platinum and gold records takes on a disturbing commentary on the temporary nature of fame, riches and possessions at the end of life.
The “Preacher” Agrees
I wonder if Johnny Cash saw the inherent parallels between his “Hurt” and the last chapter of Ecclesiastes. In fact the video seems to echo the cry of the “Preacher” “Vanity! Vanity! All is Vanity and trying to grasp the wind.” (Ecc. 2:14) In the broken opulence and fleeting fame of gold and platinum records there is something where Cash’s video reminds us that everything is so temporary. The good and the bad.
One of the things we don’t readily talk about in our culture is the pain of growing old. We live in a youth obsessed culture where we’ve made enormous strides in medicine over the last two centuries. Not only can people live longer but they can live seemingly active, healthy even “youthful” lives for longer and longer. “40 is the new 30, 60 the new 40”, these pronouncements give us the illusion that time won’t catch up. I’ve even written about generations that appear to be unable to simply “retire”.
But the writer of Ecclesiastes knows that’s a fools whim. His depiction of old age is poetically stark and nihilistic,
“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut—when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low— they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets— before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.”
As someone way closer to 50 than I thought I would ever be with a lot of hard milage so far, I’ve more and more come to appreciate these words. There is something about being all too familiar with pain. Even when one looks back at years and now decades of adulthood there are pains and regrets that simply will never be healed in this life. I will never be a “young” husband or father. I’ve spent years alone and many times lonely. I’ve worked long, hard, grueling hours for years upon years. Every so often the weight of time just feels heavy and a part of the heaviness is you know it will not lessen.
A Surprising Redemptive Reminder
I watch YouTube reactions and have watched multiple people react to “Hurt”. People cry, people note how sad it is, but hardly anyone notes feeling despair or hopeless. Its somewhat funny because the lyrics themselves and the obvious reality that June and Johnny died shortly after filming would make one think the song would be a despairing one. But perhaps it is Cash’s use of religious imagery that most changes Hurt. The video alludes to the Last Supper, shows a scene of Jesus’ crucifixion, and most notably Cash changed the lyrics to “I wear this crown of thorns”. Other than the lyric change Cash’s intentional allusion that his pain was something shared by the savior he believed in might have been missed. But the video makes the parallels intentionally. In this Cash brought a hopeful allusion to what could be a bleakly depressing coda on his life. The message that pain, old age and time inevitably come for everyone and strip everyone to their last raw nerve yet find some measure of hopefulness in Cash’s intentional religious undercurrent. The spark of hope Cash indicated was that even still, with all of the pain, loss, heartache and seeming worthlessness of it all there still might be a way for everything to be redeemed. This is one of the reasons the song comes off as mournful and regretful, but not nihilistic as Reznor’s version seems to.
This Easter week I think it is a good thing to focus on the reality of the fallenness of our world. That everything this world offers in fame, money, recognition, even in good things like family and love will be taken away from us by sin and death. We do well to not pretend that the loss isn’t real or that the pain isn’t great. But this week we are reminded of the hope Cash reminds us in that song. That we have a redeemer who felt all of those things, even death. But the hope is that he didn’t stay dead. Which means the promise is all of our hurts will one day be redeemed as well.
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