Johnny Cash's 'Hurt': The Sad Song Inspired by Nine Inch Nails' Original Hit

In November 2002, 70-year-old Johnny Cash released the final album of his career, American IV: The Man Comes Around. Included on the project was the music legend's rendition of what is widely-regarded as one of the saddest songs of all time.

"Hurt," which Cash released as a single in March 2003, routinely finds its way onto lists of the most depressing songs in music history. The song's accompanying music video also left a powerful mark on viewers.

"His trembling voice, aged with the weight of a lifetime, made it sound less like a song and more like a final confession," writes Eric Alper, who ranked "Hurt" as the saddest song of all time in 2025. "Neuroscientists point to its slow, steady pulse and minor chords—which mirror the heartbreaking acceptance of mortality."

But several years before Cash debuted his take on "Hurt," the original version by Nine Inch Nails had its own day in the sun.

'Hurt' may be a sad song, but both versions were a smashing success

Nine Inch Nails included "Hurt" on its 1994 album The Downward Spiral, and then released the song as a promotional single, straight to radio, in April 1995.

The song reached No. 8 on the Canada Rock/Alternative and U.S. Alternative Airplay charts and also received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Song in 1996.

Like Cash's version, Nine Inch Nails' original is also a frequent flier on saddest songs lists on the internet.

A classic done two ways

Twenty-three years after Cash's death, Nine Inch Nails remains forever linked with the country icon because of "Hurt."

"Cash was a year away from dying when he cut the song, and he turned the tale of heroin abuse into a look back on his life while barely changing any of the lyrics," Rolling Stone wrote in 2013 when it named Nine Inch Nails' version the second-saddest song ever. "June Carter Cash appeared in the video just three months before she died. Without any dispute, it was Cash's final masterpiece and the perfect epitaph. When you hear Trent Reznor singing it today, it's nearly impossible to not think about Johnny Cash."

Reznor, Nine Inch Nails' lead singer, told Geoff Rickly of the Alternative Press in 2004 that it was "incredibly flattering as a writer" to have Cash, "a great writer and a great artist," choose to cover his song.