Sheryl Crow Includes Johnny Cash in New ‘Redemption Day’ Video
Nearly two decades after the release of her self-titled album in 1996, Sheryl Crow has released a new video for her song 'Redemption Day.'
The tune was originally written by Crow in 1995, but the video contains a new arrangement with the singer exchanging verses with Johnny Cash, featuring live concert footage of Crow mixed with scenes of Cash in the '70s.
Cash covered 'Redemption Day' in 2003, calling Crow to gain her insight into the song's inception.
"He really wanted to understand what had motivated the song to be written so that he could sing it, and he wasn't just putting his voice but his actual standing in the song," she tells Rolling Stone Country. "That's really why I believed everything that Johnny sang; his words had real meaning and real connection to his spirit."
Crow wrote the song after visiting Bosnia with Hillary Clinton, and the video features footage of American soldiers throughout the 20th century.
"I really experienced something I'd never seen before, which was what it looks like to be in a war-torn area and meet people who had suffered through that," Crow says. "Part of [Clinton's] goal was to speak to the women and children in those villages. The moment we went into Bosnia, the whole genocide was happening in Rwanda and we sat back and watched it, yet Bosnia seemed to be kind of a stronghold in Europe and we needed the military presence there. I came home really struck by the question of why we invest in some countries, and other countries we don't."
Cash's version of the song wasn't released until his posthumous album 'American VI: Ain't No Grave' came out in 2010. The cover inspired Crow to combine the two versions for the new video, and she reached out Cash's son John Carter for help.
"We asked if we could mix his voice in and John Carter loved the idea, and we just used footage of him looking like himself -- all aspects of himself through his career -- so you see that and you hear his voice, and it's very profound and impactful when you see it live," she says.