Johnny Cash

I'm not really a country music fan, but I think the last few albums by Johnny Cash, the "American" albums, are just fantastic.  "American V" is coming out in a couple months, and there's even talk of an "American VI" album to be released eventually.

I think what makes the albums so great is the no-holds-barred approach that Cash took to them.  Cash was in bad health the last few years before he died, and producer Rick Rubin prodded him to record whatever songs he wanted to sing - while he still had the chance.

The resulting work is breathtaking.  I would imagine when you are nearing death and you're making music, you really don't care about hit songs or selling records.  You just want to sing the songs you want to sing, while there's still time.  We would all do better if we could utilize this philosophy earlier in life.  How much time is wasted creating work that is "socially acceptable", but not truly what we want to do?  Sure, everyone has to make a living, but this mindset of social approval and acceptance pervades other areas of life as well.  It's all too easy to take the brightly lit path that society lays out for us.  Yet often society is the beneficiary of this path, not the traveller himself.