Even the best good ideas can get pushed too far, and for Johnny Cash, American III: Solitary Man is one Rick Rubin-built cover album over the line. The point with the Cash-Rubin series, which started in 1994 with American Recordings and continued with 1996's Unchained, isn't really transformation, as Willie Nelson has done with his recent cover treatments of reggae and blues. The point is that Cash's baritone (still able, despite the onset of a neurological disorder) is elemental, the marrow of sadness; simply to bestow that dark voice on moody songs by a range of songwriters is statement enough.
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