0354. Johnny Cash
American IV: The Man Comes Around

His first album on this list is also the final album of his life.
Johnny Cash was at the end of a long and bumpy carreer, from the cocky king of the (county) world with his own TV show to being all but forgotten, to the triumphant return in his autumn years, he'd released forty-nine albums if I didn't count wrong (which of course made this his fiftieth).
I'll recommend this album to well, almost anyone, but I won't pretend it's the best release ever, cause here and there his heart isn't in it.

But where it is, American IV is a very good album of Americana. It's also about finality and death, from the title track (one of three Cash-penned songs on the album and the only one written specifically for it) with its narrative of the second coming and god's final judgment to the farewell in the final song, We'll Meet Again.
In between there's stories of fatal mistakes and executions, but also love and hope in covers in covers of everyone from The Beatles to Sting. But all are outshined, or rather out-darkened by the black hole of Hurt, the Nine Inch Nails-cover that, accompanied by its video, is a gripping a man at the end of it all.