You can’t help but wonder why. What is alt-rock god Ryan Adams doing covering Taylor Swift’s zeitgeist of an album, 1989?
Is it a joke? Is the rocker taking the piss out of Swift? Is it, like
Father John Misty’s Swift covers, a critical jibe? Or is this real?
Does Ryan Adams, a musician with serious music cred, actually admire the
album?
Turns out he does. Ryan Adams’ cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989
is sincere. It’s an authentic homage to what many agree is already a
timeless album. Whether Adams’ take is any good or not is an entirely
different question.
Full disclosure in the interest of journalistic integrity: I’m a bit of a Swifty. As such, it’s a challenge to get into the Bruce Springsteen vibe of the cover album. Where Swift ramps up, Adams slows down and elongates. Where she gets bouncy and adorable, he gets low and resolute. Where she goes for the big pop chorus, he glosses over the earworm hooks. The thing is, it’s hard to do Adams when you want Swift.
The bigger problem is there’s not a great deal of invention in the album. The greatest re-imagining happens with the ubiquitous “Out of the Woods,” a cover that departs from the layered force of Swift’s vocals and enters into Adams’ gritty vocals and rangy Smiths-esque guitar.
The album succeeds when the covers more closely fit into Adams’ wheelhouse in speed and content. The slower ballad-style songs like “How You Get the Girl,” “This Love,” and “I Know Places” help the listener forget that we’re listening for Swift. But we should want more from a cover. A cover should bring greater glory and nuance to the original rather than make us miss it. Ultimately, the whole album just feels like an exercise, and not a successful one at that. Repeated listenings will make you hunger for the Ryan Adams of Heartbreaker, or better yet, the Taylor Swift cover-for-cover album of Heartbreaker. Seriously, how has that not happened yet?
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