Gary Numan on the beauty of Johnny Cash’s ‘Hurt’
Throughout the late 1970s and early ’80s, Gary Numan secured his place as a new wave icon. Heading up the synth-pioneering Tubeway Army, he was the mind behind the off-kilter hit ‘Are Friends Electric?’. As a soloist, he found success with the quirky hit, ‘Cars’. Though the triumphs of either project never went too much further at the time, Numan has since become a cult name in music for his innovative of electronica.
While Numan’s own soundscapes existed within the new wave sphere of the ’80s, his love of the genre stretches far beyond his contemporaries. Numan is a devoted fan of Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails, a far more industrial sound than any of his own work. Still, their sounds are similarly dark and intricate, so it’s fitting that he’s a big fan.
Numan once shared his love for the industrial rock outfit while speaking with BBC Radio 2: “Well, I’m a massive Nine Inch Nails fan, one of my proudest moments is that they did a cover of one of my songs a while ago, and that is probably the pinnacle of my career, as far as I’m concerned. I love them to bits.”
In 2018, Nine Inch Nails released a live video of them covering Numan’s track ‘Metal’, which featured on his debut solo record The Pleasure Principle in 1979. A year later, they performed ‘Cars’ alongside Numan. Though Numan was elated by their take on his tracks, he maintains his belief that those who attempt to cover Nine Inch Nails are fighting a losing battle: “There have been a lot of covers of Nine Inch Nails songs, none of which, I think, come close to the originals at all.”
To Numan, the one exception to this rule is perhaps also the most famous. In 2002, Johnny Cash covered ‘Hurt’ from their second studio album, The Downward Spiral. The cover took the track into gothic country territory, accompanied by a music video which forms a collage of Cash’s legacy. It proved so emotive that it is now a tear-jerking staple.
Despite dubbing himself “a bit of an anoraky fan”, Numan named the song one of the “tracks of his years” and hailed it “a phenomenal bit of music”. He continued to explain his love for the cover, adding, “Not just because it’s a great song and a great version, but with all [the] struggling with his health for several years.”
Numan also noted the moving effect of the video, recalling, “And then the video for it. I’ve watched tens of thousands of promo videos over time. I know the good ones and rubbish ones, but it’s very very rare that one actually, sort of, brings a tear to your eye and slows you down, and the Johnny Cash ‘Hurt’ video did that to me. Really emotional thing, brilliant performance.”
Reflect on Johnny Cash’s beautiful and heartbreaking cover of ‘Hurt’ by Nine Inch Nails below.
