Ryan Adams

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21101-1989/
Don't agree with Richardson but I think he wrote a very good review

The strained effort and feeling with which he sings the last chorus of 'Style' is exhilirating and puzzling...'we never go out of style'...it sounds like he's pleading for his life...as a listener I feel like consoling him somehow...'ok man, don't worry about it. You won't.'

Time for a reality check for that metacritic score.

that was an admirably straightforward review.

Swift's 1989 songs are written for a specific kind of production—the melodies are clipped, percussive, and designed to hit with force at very specific times. They are written to be electro-pop songs, which rely more on big dynamic changes and repeating cells of melody.

I don't think this is true of most of the album, is the thing. I think it's more the reverse -- they were largely written as Taylor Swift songs, and then retooled and polished as Max Martin productions. Which is why I think the Adams version of "Blank Space" works just fine (even though I think Richardson's right about "Shake It Off"). And the mid-tempo songs, which aren't all that electro-pop on Taylor's album anyway, adapt easily to Ryan's settings.

I don't love the Ryan record, but I like it, and the best 5-6 tracks off of it I think work really well.

they were largely written as Taylor Swift songs

I don't know – this album feels more like a full-on collaboration between Swift + Shellbck + Martin, et. al instead of "Here's some songs, add drum machines to them."

I don't think this is true of most of the album, is the thing. I think it's more the reverse -- they were largely written as Taylor Swift songs, and then retooled and polished as Max Martin productions...

― something totally new, it’s the AOR of the twenty first century (tipsy mothra), Friday, September 25, 2015

Exactly. It's an especially weird position to take given the sentence that comes before, which is kind of the point of the entire exercise: "Every recorded song is the end point of a long road with many possible forks in it—a series of small decisions about chord changes, melody lines, lyrics, and arrangements."

I don't love the Ryan record, but I like it, and the best 5-6 tracks off of it I think work really well.

Can I agree with this and still believe it's among his best records? He's never not done concept albums (the Dylan record, the 70s rock record, the 80s rock record, the Grateful Dead record, the Nashville record etc etc) and this feels of a piece with that project but while I know the sequencing was debated endlessly in the 1989 thread, his 1989 benefits from the original's tight curation.

Everyone's always saying he needs an editor, and what makes this work as a Ryan Adams record is that he doesn't have an opportunity to cover the compositions that didn't make the final cut.

xpost Not like that, more like "here are some demos with me and a guitar, do the thing you do with them."

xpost Yeah, if this were a Ryan Adams album proper it would be twice as long, with original Adams songs in the style of Taylor Swift.

Though as even my lil' daughter (who is not a big fan of Swift's 1989, for some reason) noticed, presented as guy with guitar songs as opposed to big productions really shines a light on the weakness of the lyrics when they lose the top 40 turbo boost.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 25, 2015 7:48 AM

pfft what does your lil' daughter know. the lyrics are great. what does she want Jason Mraz?

Man, I'll take Nobel Laureate poet Swift over almost everything else she and her peers like these days.

the Dylan record

which one is this?

Heartbreaker

cool!

depression sets in. 1989 is a very good record, and RA's 1989 is a very good record, and the freeway pileup of thinkpieces (and inevitable Wave 2 thinkpieces about the thinkpieces) is enough to make me slit my wrists. music/"culture" writing in the twitter age can, by and large, go fuck itself.

Yeah, tbf I really hadn't encountered or looked for any mass of reactions, and now that I've seen them ... ugh, they just make everyone look bad, for their blanket dismissals of Adams, for their dismissals of Swift, for claiming that he makes her sound good, to claiming that she is a better songwriter than he, to people invoking the term "mansplaining," all sorts of shit. The fact of the matter is, if this had a different title and slightly different lyrics, no one would know its inspiration, and most Adams fans would probably put it on par with some of his moodier albums. Like the one that came out last year.

people might not think it was inspired at all

?

Adams' 1989, for all its sincerity and technical execution, is ultimately hollow because it's nothing but context. There's everything surrounding it (the unexpected match of singer and song, the details of the release) and there's what you bring to it (your relationship to the music of Swift and Adams, your demographic profile, your feelings on rock and pop and covers in general) but there's no essential reason for it to exist.
Fuck this shit, I wish I didn't know what this is suppose to imply, but this makes me hate critics and never want to read reviews of music.

yeah i hated reading that

i get what he's trying to say but the thing is he's trying to say something very stupid. get one quixote of pierre menard.

mark richardson is caca

claiming that he makes her sound good, to claiming that she is a better songwriter than he

these are both true to the point of obvious

surprised to find 1989 available for download on google's own server

http://i.imgur.com/nB9gA99.png

then again, since it's not available on any streaming services apart from apple music...

(a lot of people use google drive for filesharing)

I guess that makes sense, still surprised to see a pirated version of 1989 as result #2

claiming that he makes her sound good, to claiming that she is a better songwriter than he

these are both true to the point of obvious

Clearly not, because on the former point I was relating the claim some have made that she is terrible and he makes her sound good. That's what I meant. She's definitely a better songwriter than Adams, though I personally don't rate either that high, tbh.

I don't know taylor swift at all but this cover album is pretty great. Adams sounds so much like a reincarnation of springsteen that it hurts. I am pretty sure i wouldn't give a shit about taylor swift's original. Or am i wrong?

Yeah, i probably wouldn't push Taylor on people who like painful Springsteen imitations

mark richardson is caca

A couple of us have hammered at it, but anyone who has long tuned out Ryan Adams, or never tuned in to begin with, would probably like that self-titled Adams record, which is rife with nods to Springsteen, Tom Petty, etc., and sounds like a better version of (his) "1989." I mean, check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lpGaTzHb9c

Or this, which is similarly "Refugee"-esque to great effect: For that matter, I could imagine this totally Max Martin-ed out into a huge pop-rock song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu4CxPKBTK8

I still think of this guy as the guy from a b-squad Uncle Tupelo ripoff band

He is/was. But he's released so much, from metal and punk to generic alt country that every once in a while he gets on base.

Thanks for hammering at it, finally gave in and looked it up and it delivers

I still think of this guy as the guy from a b-squad Uncle Tupelo ripoff band

― Ma$e-en-scène (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, September 28, 2015 2:38 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

m@tt u r better than this bad opinione

has his singing improved in the past 20 years? b/c i heard a whiskeytown song on the radio the other day, and it wasn't terrible, but his voice was all over the place.

Depends what he's imitating

i think in whiskeytown he was going for a much more affected country thing and hadn't really found his voice yet? idk imo

He + band sounded good doing Bad Blood and Style on The Daily Show tonight. He played coy when Trevor said people assumed he was covering the album ironically, but *shrug*.

All You Had to Do Was Stay still getting overlooked the same way it did last year when people were talking about Taylor's album. Best song on either version imo.

"He delivers "Shake It Off" in a grim and determined tone that would be appropriate if he were singing about how conservative politics have decimated rural families at the inaugural Farm Aid"

Can't hate a review with a line like that

Maybe those rural families should have stayed home from the first Farm Aid if they didn't want to be bummed out (by the debut of Van Hagar).

I just appreciate a Farm Aid joke in 2015. Sometimes a reference is so far from topical that it becomes sublime.

Sigh It's now a world full of a bunch of cargo dad pants bands with soulless, bullshit lyrics and about the level of danger you might feel if you mixed hot fries with ginger ale. Fuck that

lol this from a guy who's last album is a Taylor Swift cover record

tbf that's a more dangerous move than any cargopants band is gonna muster

Ryan's super self-conscious, deliberate fashion affectations always kinda bothered me.

New album, "Prisoner" has leaked, out next month. It's all about his divorce. Some really good songs, some boring retreads. The press says he's channelling Bruce Hornsby's 80s work.

Really liked the self-titled, really liked the Taylor Swift, like what I've heard of this so far. It's like he glommed on to what Kurt Vile and War On Drugs have been doing and is sort of doing the same thing but turned around. That is, rather than indie guys nodding to Tom Petty/classic rock etc., this is someone closer to Tom Petty nodding to indie stuff nodding to Tom Petty/classic rock. Meta MOR?

His episode of WTF podcast the other day was pretty good.