Johny Cash - Hurt ...

[Everbeatz]

I've been friends with Rick Rubin for quite a while, and he asked me how I would feel about Johnny Cash doing one of my songs. I thought, "Wow," because my songs have been my therapy, a vehicle for me to keep sane. I've never really thought about writing songs for other people, and I've never tried to pitch my songs to people. And that song in particular came from a pretty private, personal place. So it seemed, well, like that's my song.

Rick sent me a CD of it. I listened to it, and it seemed incredibly strange and wrong to me to hear that voice with my song. I thought, "Here's this thing that I wrote in my bedroom in a moment of frailty, and now Johnny Cash is singing it." It kind of freaked me out

Rick asked what I thought, and I said, "You did a very tasteful job with it" -- which I did think and do think. It was a big juxtaposition for me to hear it as someone else's song now. It instantly became his song after that.