Folk/Country — All Formats  

The sweet, lovely and lush full length debut of Mary Hopkin for Apple Records! Mary's vocals are fragile and sweet, and Paul McCartney's production frames it like a pillow on the softer tunes – with light bits of acoustic guitar – and makes are sound like the queen of all natural on the more grandly orchestrated tracks. 15 tracks on the original album, including "Those Were The Days", "Lord Of thE Reedy River", "Love Is The Sweetest Thing", "The Puppy Song", "Inchworm", "Young Love", "The Game", "Someone To Watch Over Me" and more.

Cash's fourth volume of stark, sparely-arranged studio recordings for producer/set list provider Rick Rubin. As Johnny gets on in the years his always haunting voice, like Bob Dylan's, is weighted by age, but the heavily-breathed delivery only adds to the ghostly quality of the increasingly dark tunes. With this fourth set in the series we're far past being surprised by the choice of material – this time Cash conjures up spiritual takes on Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus", Trent Reznor's "Hurt", Lennon/McCartney's "In My Life", and more traditional material like Hank Williams' "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and the eternally underrated Marty Robbins' "Big Iron". You can't forget that Cash's pen is still pretty sharp, too, as the really spooky imagery in the title track and others testify. The accompaniment includes the great Randy Scruggs, Beck/Tom Waits guitarist Smokey Hormel, Marty Stewart, Glen Campell, and backing vocals by Nick Cave and Fiona Apple. Another great one from the greatest!

Music by Walter Raim – with titles that include "Red Apple Juice", "Sing Out", "Seven Daffodils", "Writing On The Wall", and "Calumet City".