Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways

American V: A Hundred Highways gathers songs Johnny Cash recorded in his final months, released in 2006 as one of the most moving records of his career.

The fifth chapter of his partnership with producer Rick Rubin was cut in 2003, the year June Carter Cash died, as Cash kept working through failing health. Rubin later finished the arrangements around his vocals, keeping them sparse so the focus never leaves that weathered, unshakable baritone.

God's Gonna Cut You Down turns a traditional warning into a stomping, hand-clapped sermon, while his reading of Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind is tender and devastating. Like the 309, the last song he ever wrote, finds him joking about his own death with a wheezing, train-ride grin.

Help Me opens the record as a plain, open-hearted prayer, setting the tone for an album that faces mortality without a trace of self-pity. Covers of Bruce Springsteen and Hank Williams sit beside his own songs, all of them sounding like letters from a man saying goodbye on his own terms.

For country fans and anyone moved by the American series, this is a bittersweet, beautifully quiet late chapter, and one that rewards a slow, attentive listen.