Father John Misty Follows Ryan Adams’ Lead + Covers Taylor Swift’s ‘Blank Space’
When an opportunity to shine a light on and simultaneously poke fun at pop culture runoff presents itself, Father John Misty, without fail, is there to step up to the plate. So when Ryan Adams unveiled his song-for-song covers album of Taylor Swift’s 1989, J. Tillman was there with even more Swift covers.
Last night (Sept. 21), after a day’s worth of buzz surrounding the Adams-Swift alliance, Tillman uploaded his own covers of Adams’ covers of Swift... in the style of the Velvet Underground. In a tweet that has since been deleted, Tillman wrote, “My reinterpretation of the classic Ryan Adams album 1989,” with a link to a Soundcloud page featuring Tillman doing his very best Lou Reed on “Welcome to New York” and “Blank Space.” While the songs have since been pulled from Soundcloud (surprise, surprise), you can still hear Tillman’s rendition of “Blank Space” at the top of the page.
Adams unveiled his 1989 covers album yesterday, later appearing with Swift on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 show to discuss the new LP. In addition to 1989, last year’s self-titled album and a string of Pax-Am singles in-between, Adams revealed he’s already written a double album follow-up. Listen to the entire interview with Lowe right here.
If you can't hear the implied laugh track in Tillman's Adams/Swift covers, you can hear an actual laugh track on his latest Father John Misty album, I Love You, Honeybear, which arrived earlier this year. Recently, he shared a music video for the LP's latest single, "The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment."