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- Summary: The 11 previously unreleased demos recorded at Nashville's LSI Studios in 1993 by Johnny Cash features newly recorded instrumentation by such artists as Pete Abbott, Dan Auerbach, Vince Gill, Dave Roe, and Marty Stuart.
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- Record Label: American Recordings
- Genre(s): Country
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 9 out of 11
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Mixed: 2 out of 11
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Negative: 0 out of 11
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Jun 27, 2024Songwriter is indeed a by-product of music rendered on a digital frontier; it is a worthy effort because it reinforces the humanity of a star who, in his last days, could seem like some untouchable god. [Aug 2024, p.78]
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Jun 27, 2024While the later tracks on Songwriter do start to feel slightly samey and Cash by numbers, they remain highly listenable, with impeccable performances from the band throughout. The arrangements and production merge seamlessly with the original demos, proving how intimately the key players knew Cash and his music, with the man himself in fine voice, sounding simultaneously both sonorously world weary and vibrantly fresh.
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Jul 15, 2024His songwriting genius comes through each of these songs, but most impactfully, his voice cuts to the heart like it always has. The instrumentation and arrangements, while recreated posthumously, are tasteful and reverential to Cash’s best recordings, which makes the album not of any specific time but timeless.
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Jun 27, 2024The beauty is in the simplicity. If nothing else, this proves that Johnny Cash is irreplaceable. It’s both refreshing and sad to hear him again.
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Jun 28, 2024It’s a time capsule of how Cash was feeling in the early nineties and is a reminder of his immense talents as both a singer and a songwriter and serves as a poignant and career-defining moment of the Man in Black’s enduring musical legacy.
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Jul 5, 2024Songwriter works well as an important document of a previously underrepresented era for Cash, whose career was about to enter a transformational new phase.
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Jun 27, 2024The songs themselves are a mixed bag, some showing promise and others showing disillusionment.