The album is composed of recordings made by Cash in 1981 and 1984 with producer Billy Sherrill for Columbia Records. The album was shelved by the label and was never released. In 2012 Cash's son, John Carter Cash, discovered the recordings in the archive and commissioned additional production to complete the album. Cash also recorded the 1981 album The Baron with Sherrill in an attempt to turn around his dismal album sales but the strategy did not work, leaving his record executives eager to end his affiliation with the label. The album is also a posthumous release for June Carter Cash, Johnny Cash's wife, who is featured on two tracks, and for Minnie Pearl and Waylon Jennings, who provide vocals on two other songs, "If I Told You Who It Was" and "I'm Movin' On", respectively. Two of the tracks would later be rerecorded by Cash at American Recordings and would be released posthumously prior to earlier versions being included here; "I Came to Believe" on and a non-duet version of "I'm Movin' On" appears in the box set Unearthed. In a March 2014 interview promoting the release of Out Among the Stars, John Carter Cash indicated that there may be as many as "four or five" albums worth of previously unreleased material from Cash's 1990s–2000s American label recording sessions, with Cash's last producer, Rick Rubin indicating at least one more such release is planned for the future.
Release and promotion
Lead single "She Used to Love Me a Lot" was released on January 14, 2014, on the Rolling Stone website. "I'm Movin' On", featuring Waylon Jennings, was released as the second single and was premiered by CMT on February 6, 2014. The third single, "Baby, Ride Easy", a duet with June Carter Cash was premiered exclusively by One Country on February 27, 2014. The album's title track, "Out Among the Stars", was released as the fourth and final single, with its lyric video premiering on May 7, 2014.
Critical reception
Prior to its release, Stereogum named it one of the most anticipated albums of 2014. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote that Billy Sherrill "winds up simply sweetening Johnny without changing his core sound". He added that the album "is generally chipper and bright" and "one of Cash's stronger '80s albums". Rob Tannembaum's review in Rolling Stone mentions Cash's fading star power in the early 1980s amidst the "Urban Cowboy fad". Tannembaum continued: "You might expect Out Among the Stars—a set of unreleased songs he cut with Sherrill in 1981 and 1984—to be a contract-fulfilling sleepwalk. Instead, it proves that even at his most uninterested, Cash couldn't help but make a record with weight, moral complexity and grim humor."
Commercial performance
Released on March 25, 2014, Out Among the Stars debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 and #1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums charts, selling 54,000 copies its first week. As of June 29, 2014, the album has sold 149,000 copies in the United States. In the UK, the album debuted at No. 4 in the album chart. The album has sold 63,700 copies in the UK as of July 2014.
