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Jonathan Muir

1201 English Composition II

Mrs. Morean

24 September 2021

Hurt: Nine Inch Nails vs Johnny Cash

In September of 1995, Nine Inch Nails released their second studio album “The

Downward Spiral,” which contained the hit song “Hurt.” Eight years later in 2003, Johnny Cash

released a cover of the song as a single. The two versions contain surprisingly different imagery

and interpretations of the same lyrics. The Johnny Cash cover of "Hurt" originally by Nine Inch

Nails brings a new meaning to the lyrics, using traditional American imagery to shift the

meaning of the lyrics to focusing on the loss of the things one loves as opposed to a general

feeling of numbness from sustained pain.

The Nine Inch Nails version of the song focuses highly on the sustained feeling of pain a

man feels with dark and dramatic imagery. The video starts off with clips depicting death and

demise while showing the singer clutching a microphone. The video adds in imagery of reptiles

as a parallel to the harsh nature of the world we live in. The dark and dramatic vocals emphasize

a deep feeling of pain and numbness, emphasized by the stagnant pose of the lead singer. This

dark imagery helps elucidate a feeling of pain from the viewers. As more and more emotions are

conjured by the images, they bring about a feeling of rage and sadness, emphasizing the “Hurt”

that the singer feels. This feeling of rage and sadness helps connect the audience, people who

also feel hurt, to the singer, establishing a deeper connection between the lead singer and the

listeners and viewers. Because of the dark imagery displayed in the music video, the viewers can
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gain a feeling for the pain and sadness that the lead singer feels, emphasizing an effective use of

imagery to bring about strong emotions that parallel the ones of the lead singer.

The Johnny Cash version of the song has a bright hue, and a homely atmosphere to

emphasize that although everything can look good from the outside, people can still feel empty

on the inside, with something critical missing from their feeling. The video starts with clips of

Johnny playing the guitar, as well as the piano. It has imagery of an old country home, a steam

locomotive, and an American flag, imagery reminiscent of traditional America. It also has

imagery of a large dinner at an empty table, as well as a girl on a bus, looking longingly out the

window. The warm but somber imagery emphasizes the empty feeling that Cash is feeling. The

depictions of a homely vibe that has something missing highlights the feeling Cash has of a hole

in his heart. Because of the warm but somber imagery, Cash can take a very dark song about

general depression and change it into a song about the loss of things one loves, such as a girl or a

home. Cash establishes a connection with an audience of others experiencing heartbreak through

his utilization of homely imagery and a somber feeling. Cash’s interpretation of the song

juxtaposes the feeling of general numbness and changes it to a pointed feeling of loss, whether to

a girl or to one’s home.

The two versions of “Hurt” are both about sadness and pain, but they are two completely

different feelings of sadness and pain. The Nine Inch Nails video utilizes dark imagery and harsh

black and white images of wars and scaly reptiles to bring about a pointed feeling of pain,

highlighting the abrasiveness of the pain that the viewers are supposed to feel. The Johnny Cash

version utilizes familiar yet somehow somber imagery to bring about a feeling of emptiness, and

sadness over loss. Because of these two drastically different interpretations of pain and sorrow,

Cash and Nine Inch Nails can clearly depict a very deep concept, that there are different scales
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and magnitudes of the same emotion. The two adaptations clearly explicate that although

emotions sound simple, they are never how they appear to be on the surface, and people have

varying degrees of pain and emotion.

Although the two versions of “Hurt” might have the same lyrics, they hold entirely

different connotations. Because of the visuals provided in both videos, the artists can contrast the

moods evoked from the viewers by changing one from being about general depression and pain

into being about the loss of something someone loves.

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Works Cited

JohnnyCashVEVO. “Johnny Cash - Hurt (Official Music Video).” YouTube, YouTube, 13 Sept.

2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHCfZTRGiI.

ninofficial. “Nine Inch Nails: Hurt (Live) (1995).” YouTube, YouTube, 16 Mar. 2009,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhh21crSohs.