Reznor
I’ve never been a fan of Trent Reznor’s band Nine Inch Nails. Industrial just doesn’t really get it for me, and their seeming sense of self-importance was always a turn-off. Their song “Hurt” seems to me a perfect example of this. A whinny voice that belies the lyrics: any pain this guy’s felt is first-world pain, that strange phenomenon that often manifests itself in teens as cutting. Of course, a close listening shows that it’s about heroin addiction.
Still — first world issues with that voice.
Then I heard that Johnny Cash had done a version.
The Man in Black
Nothing new or all that surprising: Cash has covered bands as non-country as Danzig and Soundgarden. He’s musically adventurous. But it was more than the novelty of it that excited me as I began listening: it was his voice, that deep bass-baritone that, unlike Reznor’s nasally voice, didn’t belie the text.
“He’s a man who’s felt pain, and whose voice won’t sound like a whinny kid.”
The real musical test of a song, though, is to remove the vocals, to strip it down to the the music alone. If it stands that way, it’s a good song. Enter: 2cellos.