Rick Rubin

We picked some of those songs.

We went through hundreds of songs and then picked a handful to try to record.

And when we went into the studio with the band,

It didn't sound, it didn't have what the living room recordings had.

There was some intimate honesty and we'd never heard Johnny Cash that way before.

Um, so that led to the first album, which was a solo acoustic album.

Again, we didn't set out to make a solo acoustic album, but it revealed itself as that's the most interesting thing to do.

And that ended up being very successful and very successful with young people, which he had not experienced since the 1950s.

Um, so that was a.

And after that, after the success of that album, we made five more albums together and he had confidence based on the experience of the first one, which he'd expected nobody to care about really, uh,

took cold with people.

And then on, I think it was on our fourth or fifth album, he did a cover of Hurt, the Nine Inch Nails song, and that ended up being probably the biggest, maybe the biggest hit of his life, certainly of his later life.

And that was a real revelation.

I'll say it's not as simple as that because there's a vulnerability required for the artist.

that if you're confident to the point that it disguises your vulnerability, that doesn't work.

So it's like a dance between being wildly open and vulnerable and commitment to do whatever it takes to get your work through.

That combination, which is a difficult combination.

That's true.

There's, I'll say though, to get up in front of people and sing.

Yeah.