Beautiful. One of the best albums I have ever bought.

"The Man Comes Around" and "Hurt" scared the daylights out of me!

Great voice, great musicians, very very odd song selection. Yes, it's The Man, but does anybody really want to hear Bridge Over Troubled Water again? However, Personal Jesus absolutely rules.

Johnny Cash has truly "blossomed" at age 70 with his albums from American Recordings. It makes me wonder what could've been possible had Rick Rubin been born 50 years earlier or Cash was 50 years younger. American III and American IV are his finest masterpieces to date.

For me, this album is made great by its bookends - "The Man Comes Around" original Cash opener, and "We'll Meet Again" as the closer. Also enjoyable are "Streets of Laredo", "Desperado", and "Sam Hall". On first listens to this disk, I've tended to jump from track 1 to track 9, bypassing some of the more well known covers which - for the most part - are decently done. But it9;s as we hit "Sam Hall" and "Danny Boy" that the album really comes back to Cash territory.… Expand

only cash can do it

The title track is all you need

This album makes my skin crawl! Our local public radio station, WDET, played it from start to finish. I listened in utter amazement that something so horrible would be played on such a normally intuitive radio station. I see, I am in the minority here, but listen to the album! I subject my wife to a lot of hard-to-warm-up-to musicians, Dylan, Chris Smither, Lead Belly, Tom Waits, etc, but even I cannot swallow this! Ugh!… Expand

It wAs AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

Very powerful. Hurt is just fantastic. I don't understand some of the negative professional reviews. My family just died. The last few years visting in the nursing home were brutal. I think this album is as truthful as it gets.

From electrified to devestated to heartsick to tearstained, this album took me on a tour through my heart down the path less taken. I still come out of it crying, often without making it all the way through the album. The first time I encountered his cover- i was speechless, on the floor, in tears. The spirit of the original song became a counterpoint to a different side of my heart, and connected two different feelings. Though not the most artfully constructed album i have experienced, it remains a powerful work that moves me with terrible ease. That makes it great in my book.… Expand

great album!!!! as good as american III and that´s a lot .I can´t understand bad critics, versions are as good as always but originals are better....

Cash shows how life is rock n roll is country is folk. He was there in the beginning and continues to give meaning to the stuff he invented.

For me as a radio-DJ. this IVth ,i hope, will not be the last, HE shows all those dudes how to survive, well done, John!!

When The Man Comes around has become an instant Cash classic! Name another 70 year old artist-icon that can pull off an effort like this!

Once again Johnny Cash proves that he can do no wrong musically. My favorite track on the CD is "Hurt". I thought it was powerful done by NIN, but Johnny Cash packs a lifetime of pain into the few minutes of this song - haunting and amazing!

This album transcends nearly everything in todays music, it is deep and profound as much as Lou Reed will be in 10 years.

I was skeptical when I saw all the covers done on this album! Once again MR. CASH pulls off the impossible !! The music world will miss him greatly when he is gone !!!

This is a beautiful and gripping album from start to finish. This turned out to be Johnny Cash's last and appropriately enough it's an introspective look back at his life and the end of the trail ahead.

I'm 40. The 70's raw reckless experimentalism is dead. The wonderful 80's started a new path of sound but was ultimately killed by its record companies and resultant overkill redundancies. The ninieties stood as 10 long years of everything-you've-heard-before-rehashed and a decade of music that will be forgotten forever. This decade will be known as the one true decade of musical fusion. To wit: You get these really old crazy bastards who did their own thing year in and year out, regardless if they were fat or starving depending on the market. They just didn't care. They just wanted the hard career road of doing what they pleased. The ultimate F-You. Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and especially Lou Reed..but before you can count out the 4th commercial-free iconoclast, here comes Johnny Cash. He dropped off the radar before Rick Rubin groveled at him in '93. We are all lucky Rubin did. Who would of thought that Rubin's proposition to Cash would change everything? "I want to sign you to my label. You can sing anything you want, just you and your guitar." Good, God. And you are the luckiest man in the universe to have a monster like Cash look at you and say, "OK." American IV is a knowing swan song. Is every song about The End? Yes. He knew it. He burned a decade with Rubin showing he was the badass of badasses, but with IV, he sang it like it was his last. He said so in the liner notes. People will go on and on about the devastating version of a the devastating NIN song "Hurt," but for me the THINGS I KEEP COMING BACK TO ARE: Sting's straightforward "I Hung My Head," Cash's "The Man Comes Around," Cash' "Sam Hall, the Eagle's "Desperado", and the beautiful treatment of tear-jerker "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." I grew up with a dad and mom who loved Elvis, Neil Diamond, Waylon, Willie, and Johnny Cash. I did not get reintroduced 'til "Delia's Gone." in '93. I used to laugh uncomfortably when my uncle---a die hard Johnny fan--would say "a Dylan song? You're full of shit, Brent. That's a Johnny song." Now I understand.… Expand

It moves me...it touches my heart like poetry...Although a fan of his Sun Record material, this in some ways seems a more important work. Thanks to Rick Rubin for taking a chance him.