Another Top Album of the Year
Johnny Cash, American V:A Hundred Highways

Awesome, moving, heartbreaking and uplifting.

As I said last week when talking about music, it is at its best when it not only entertains, but also touches you in many ways. Johnny Cash has always done both. This album, which contains the last music he recorded a few months before his death, continues that great tradition that he lived for decades.

The songs are anything but beautiful. They capture the raw voice of impending death, but the raw power that stands up to it and takes away its power. Whether he is covering Rod McKuen, Bruce Springsteen, Ian Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot- or Johnny Cash- these songs are his way of thumbing his nose at death.

Like the other albums in the American series, this one is produced by Rick Rubin, Def Jam (now American) records founder and producer. He has given us a loving and highly evocative present of Johnny's last recorded songs. His production always supplements and enhances the original recordings. He brings unexpected instruments and unexpected mixing that focuses you back on Johnny.

Even at the end of life, one can make statements that are for everyone and explain more than anything else you have ever done. Maybe it is only at the end of a life like Johnny Cash's that you can do it so powerfully.