Jackson (with June Carter Cash)

There's a crackling domestic electricity here that no studio polish could contain — two voices that clearly know each other's edges, trading lines with the competitive tenderness of a long marriage. June Carter brings a quicksilver sharpness to her delivery, almost mocking, while Cash lumbers back with a deep-chested rumble that's simultaneously threatening and utterly playful. The arrangement is all coiled spring: a honky-tonk shuffle with fiddle riding high and a rhythm section that keeps everything on the verge of running away. The song is ostensibly about two people threatening each other with independence — heading to Jackson to make fools of themselves — but underneath it's about two people who are exactly each other's match and know it. It's funny in the way that real couples are funny, where the joke is also the love. Recorded in 1967 when the Nashville countrypolitan sound was sanding everything smooth, it had the rough texture of actual human friction. Reach for it at the tail end of a dinner party when the table is still full of glasses and people are arguing warmly about nothing important, or when you want to remember that love at its best is a little bit combative.