You asked if I had any favourite songs, and my answer was "all of them". I know it wasn't so helpful. For me, it isn't about any one song, it is about the singer.
Johnny Cash has always stood with the outcast and abused. What other singer would perform in a maximum security prison, and insist on no barrier between him and the audience? That takes balls. And compassion.
He had one wife. Until you have done this yourself for 10 years, you don't understand how hard it is, and the depths of frustration which a partner can bring. Keep in mind he was a star. Beautiful women threw themselves at him continuously. Temptation, opportunity, desire, longing. Cash knew what it means to live total commitment to an ideal and a person. His love was so deep that he could not live without her, and died of a broken heart soon after her death.
He was a strong Christian, though not the preachy or judgemental kind. Who else ends a concert with things like "Goodnight! See you all tomorrow in church!" I don't mean to praise the value of religion (which is doubtful) but to stress that he was a strong voice for moral behaviour, as exemplified by the two life-choices given above.
So you have to realize that all of this goes into the songs he sings.
With that, the first song I would point out is "The beast in me". This song was written explicitly for him one of his son in laws, Nick Lowe. (Cash had one daughter. She went through a lot of husbands. Did I say that Cash knew what committed marriage and love were about??).
Next up, the first song on American Recordings (1994), "Delia's Gone." This details a man murdering his wife in cold blood. Now I did some prison ministry in my youth. I spent some time with a man who though to make some money as a hit-man. He shot and killed his target. This put him into a fugue state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue_state), during which he went home and shot his wife (probably in an attempt to explain to her what he had just done to the other person). She also died. He then went to his local bar, ordered a beer, and told the bartender what he had done. The police picked him up a few minutes later.
So from talking to that man for hours, I can tell you that Johnny Cash knows intimately the mental state of a man who has just killed for poor reasons, and Delia's Gone is one of many songs which conveighs it.
Are you starting to see some of the depths and contrasts in the man?
I've also known some Vietnam vets. SO I would say "Drive On", also on American recordings, captures some of them as well. War takes killing to a whole new level.
As you get older, your sense of your own mortality gets stronger. "Like the 309" is a brilliant example of a man facing death with a smile. "On the evening train" is a heartbreaking story of a child losing his mother. Both of these are on "American V- A Hundred Highways (2006). American VI -Ain't no Grave has even more songs about the end of life.
I also very much enjoy his "cover songs". It is in quotes for a reason. To say you are doing a cover version of someone else's song implies that the song rightfully belongs to the other artist. This is a fiction, and one which Cash recognises as such. A song belongs to itself. Different people can interpret it differently, but it is the song which is the living thing.
So also look at the songs he chooses to cover. Of all the Beatle's tunes, why "In my life"? (American IV- The Man Comes Around, 2002). What do the lyrics mean to a man who has lived a full life? John Lennon was a pussy punk (living in a Manhattan penthouse, one of the riches men on earth, singing "imagine there's no money" and considered a visionary hero for it??? Did Lenon give up his money to back his vision? Rather not, the coward!). Lennon's visions of peace and harmony came from LSD. Not that is wrong, hey, at least he got the visions, but Cash got them by living them. Cash was proved by fire.
Or "One" (Unearthed, 2003). U2's song where a man tries to stop fighting with his lover. Or "If you could read my mind" (American V- 100 highways), the 1971 Gordon Lightfoot classic (inspired by Gordon's divorce, back in the day when divorce was just becoming acceptable).
Here is a man who has lived an incredible and trying love. What is he telling us about love, and about what it means to be a man via these songs?
Johnny Cash is an undeniable American. The songs and stories he tells are (mostly) about my country, good and bad. Like the Ballad of Ira Hayes (1964), the Pima Indian immortalised in the photo of US marines raising the flag over Iwo Jima, who later became a noted alcoholic. The song is on the album Bitter Tears (1964)which was dedicated to injustices done to American Indians. Keep in mind 1964 was early in the Civil Rights movement. And here comes Johnny Cash, singing to a white, southern, conservative audience about equal rights for a minority even more despised than the blacks. Did I mention he had balls?
He also has many songs praising the true heros and good done in my country. But as I am approaching my word limit, I will move to conclude. Listen to his later works for deep, deep views into what it means to live, to kill, to love, to die. Listen to his earlier works to see where it started from.
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