Album Review: Ryan Adams - 1989

One of the refreshing things about Ryan Adams as a singer/songwriter is that while he writes some devastating, earnest, and somber tunes, he, as a person, doesn’t take himself seriously at all—something that’s reflective in the stories he tells between songs at concerts, reflective in the fact that his website used to play a song where he yelled “awww shit, look who got a website” after it loaded, and it’s something that is reflective in the fact that he chose to reimagine Taylor Swift’s pop opus 1989, song by song, and self-release it.

Self releasing via his Pax Am label has been a godsend for Adams, who notoriously battled Lost Highway for over a decade when it came to what albums of his they would or wouldn’t release. At some point, during his most prolific years, he had claimed to have covered The Strokes Is This It on the mandolin.

But whether or not this was true, the project itself is sitting in his vault somewhere, along with other early 2000s-era albums of lore like The Pinkheart Sessions and The Suicide Handbook. So crediting his independence and sobriety, I have to first commend Adams for working so diligently on 1989, and seeing through to its rather quick digital release via iTunes on Sunday evening.

Let’s get the hyperbole out of the way—in a year that has been slightly better for music (I think I actually liked some albums this year) Adams’ arrangements of 1989 are, without a doubt, the best album of 2015.

Remember last year when I wrote a 1500 word thinkpiece about Taylor Swift and 1989 and compared her to Batman and said that we got the pop album we deserved?

Yeah, I know—a controversial hot take and an #unpopularopinion for sure. I was in the minority on folks who did not think this was the greatest album ever.  But I tried, you know? I really did. I wanted to like Taylor Swift’s first true foray into pop superstardom, but it just didn’t work out.

So what makes somebody else singing the same songs fodder for “Record of the Year”?

Well, it has to do with Adams’ own abilities as a songwriter—a skill that he uses here that takes the source material, strips away the bloated and vapid pop sheen of the originals, and arranges them into an alternate structure so that they are almost unrecognizable.

If you didn’t know the first thing about Taylor Swift, you’d swear that this was just another Ryan Adams album; the songs are put together that well, and even with “pop” song lyrics, they are so convincingly delivered that Adams will make you a believer.

Gone are the 80s synthesizers on “Welcome to New York” and the big beat production on “Shake it Off”—the latter replaced with a sparse, spectral arrangement where Adams voice almost whispers the lyrics over haunting steel guitar; the former, turning into a straight up Springsteen-esq, fist pumping anthem.

1989, in the hands of Taylor Swift, was incredibly self-aware, as depicted best by the lyrics relating to her love life, or lack thereof—a kiss off, if you will, to all the boys she ended up calling a mistake in the end.

However, in the hands of Adams, his 1989, becomes a very personal breakup record.

Following the release of his self-titled effort last fall, it was announced that he and his wife Mandy Moore were separating. You can almost read a little too much into some of the lyrics from that self-titled album then—“Am I safe if I don’t wanna be with you?” he asks in one song.

Here, songs like “Out of The Woods,” “All You Had to Do Was Stay,” and “Wildest Dreams” immerse themselves in Adams’ own heartbreak, aligning them with his finest, most earnest moments of songwriting.

It’s that heartbreak, according to his interview with the intolerable Zane Lowe of Apple Radio, is what drove him headfirst into this project late last year, learning all the songs in less than two weeks before shaping them into the final product you hear now.

And that heartbreak is palpable. In some cases, it’s simply almost too much, specifically in the affecting desperation that permeates “Out of The Woods,” the regret set against a Smiths-esq jangle in “All You Had to Do…” with its accusatory “Why’d you have to go and lock me out when I let you in,” and the slow motion beauty and slight twang of “Wildest Dreams,” which incidentally was the only song off of Swift’s 1989 that I found palatable, despite the fact that it’s the song that pushed my wife over the edge when we were listening to the album.

Then there’s Adams’ crowning achievement on the record—the piano driven, tortured “This Love,” which ranks amongst his own best sad, slow burning ballads, like “Elizabeth, You Were Born to Play That Part,” “Silver Bullets,” and “The Shadowlands.”

However, even in capable hands like those of Ryan Adams, 1989 is far from perfect, though it almost achieves perfection had it ended with “This Love.” It unfortunately ends with its two least successful tracks—the miscast southwestern stomp of “I Know Places” and the somewhat middle of the road “Clean.”

(Also, I couldn’t believe that Adams omitted the “This sick beat” interlude from “Shake it Off.” I mean, come on guy….)

So what makes this the album of the year for 2015? And why is it that in the hands (and voice) of one artist, another artist’s work becomes palatable?

The answer to those questions is kind of the same thing—and that is how human this record is. But it’s also that Ryan Adams is just the best dude.

In all seriousness, the real issue I had with Taylor Swift’s 1989 was that even if the songs were well written, and the lyrics were, like, deep, or whatever—everything was dressed up in the façade of Top 40 pop music.

I mean, they dressed up to the point of distraction at times. It was a big sounding record and the focus shifted away from any meaning Swift’s songwriting may have had, and the emphasis was placed directly on selling a product using catchy hooks and fun, upbeat sounding instrumentation and arrangements.

With Adams’ 1989, all that is gone, and the real focus is on the lyrics—and how he makes these words, and these stories, his own. If you switch a few gender pronouns and delver every lyric as earnestly as possible, it’s believable. And it works.

Also, this thing sounds incredible, because of course it would. Adams is a notorious studio perfectionist and audiophile—the drums are crisp, the chorus pedal-heavy guitars ring out strong, and his voice is drenched in just the right amount of reverb that it lingers in the ether for just that extra moment.

Over the course of his post-Whiskeytown solo career, Ryan Adams has given us a little bit of everything: alternative country, 1970s AM radio warmth, garage rock, and snotty brit-pop influenced pop. It takes a true talent to cross back and forth between styles like that and still have any kind of semblance of a career; it also takes a true talent, and a brave talent, to take an entire album from another artist, strip it down to its bare bones, and make it your own—and still incorporate nearly all of your best known music styles within, like the gentle singer/songwriter acoustic strums show up on “Blank Space,” or the brash punk attitude on “Style.”

My conclusion from Taylor Swift’s 1989 was that we got the pop album we deserved. Less than a year later, and coming from a different artist, with Ryan Adams, we get the Taylor Swift album we deserve. Very rarely do I look forward to an album this that I stay up late the night it comes out, huddled with my computer, listening to it on headphones; very rarely do I make faces of disbelief and surprise while listening to a new album. This is one of those rare occasions where something is so good that it makes it okay, just for a few moments, to believe in music again.

Last year, we were all Taylor Swift—we were all standing in a nice dress, looking at the sunset. This year, we’re all a heartbroken Ryan Adams—standing in a denim jacket adorned with heavy metal band patches, accomplishing something that sounds laughable on paper, but in execution, arrives as an incredible triumph of the human spirit.

1989 is out digitally now, with a physical release promised by year's end, via Pax Am.