Listen to Ryan Adams’ Completely Unironic + Inspired Full-Album Cover of Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’
It just became exponentially easier for sensitive teenage boys to put together just the right playlists to express their otherwise indefinable feelings about girls they'll almost certainly never get.
At long last (after a few months of online teasing), Ryan Adams has unveiled his entire album cover of Taylor Swift's ubiquitous, multi-platinum 1989. Released on Adams' own Pax-Am label, the album is available right now on iTunes. A physical release will follow at some point in the undetermined future. Of course, you can also stream each of the songs (except album closer "Clean" for some reason) below via YouTube.
In support of the release, Adams was a guest on Zane Lowe's Beats 1 Radio show on Monday afternoon. T-Swift herself (who had already gushed that the existence of the album “surreal and dreamlike") made a not-so-surprise appearance. Adams explained that the idea for the project came about as he was going through a rough patch last year and found that the "emotional content" on Swift's album particularly spoke to him – he noted it was similar to the way the Smiths once struck a chord inside him.
Swift said her favorite cover is currently a tie between "Blank Space" and How You Get the Girl." She told Lowe: “The album is absolutely gorgeous and you can tell it was something well thought-out and conceptualized, not just thrown together. What struck me immediately is that they’re not just cover songs, they’re re-imaginings of my songs. He was in a different place emotionally than where I was when I wrote them. There’s this beautiful aching sadness in this album that doesn’t exist on the original.”
Listen to the entire interview: