American V: A Hundred Highways

'America V: A Hundred Highways' is the final chapter in Johnny Cash's celebrated American Recordings series. Once again produced by ZZ Top understudy Rick Rubin, the album features 12 selections taken from the country legend's final 2003 recording sessions. A less flashy batch of tunes than the previous American entry (which saw the man in black singing on such square-peg covers as 'Personal Jesus' and a dazed Fiona Apple duet on 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'), the record offers a genuinely warm epitaph to Cash's influential career with weathered but spirited takes on Bruce Springsteen, Gordon Lightfoot, and Rod McKuen tunes, as well as his own 'Like the 309', which marks Cash's last original composition put to tape. These songs are Johnny's final statement. they are the truest reflection of the music that was central to his life at the time. This is the music that Johnny wanted us to hear.