1989 (Ryan Adams album)

1989
Studio album by Ryan Adams
Released September 21, 2015
Recorded Pax-Am, Los Angeles
Genre
Length 54:18
Label PAX AM
Producer
Ryan Adams chronology
Ryan Adams
(2014)		 1989
(2015)

1989 is the fifteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Ryan Adams, released digitally through his own PAX AM record label on September 21, 2015. The album is a track-by-track cover of Taylor Swift's album of the same name.[1] It debuted at number 7 on the US Billboard 200 chart, one position ahead of Swift's 1989, which was in its 48th week on the chart.[2]

Background

Adams first became interested in Taylor Swift's album while coping with the collapse of his marriage to Mandy Moore.[3] On what attracted him about Swift's album, Adams stated "There's just a joy to 1989,"[3] describing the album as "its own alternate universe."[3] Adams initially described the album as being in the style of The Smiths.[4] When recording the album, Adams said he found a sound somewhere between Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town and The Smiths' Meat Is Murder.[5]

Taylor Swift's response

On the day that Adams announced the project, Swift responded enthusiastically from her Twitter account, saying "Cool I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight or ever again and I'm going to celebrate today every year as a holiday."[6]

Two weeks later, an official statement was released via Entertainment Weekly, whereupon Swift expressed further excitement and anticipation:

"Ryan Adams is one of the artists who shaped my songwriting. My favorite part of his style of creating music is his ability to bleed aching vulnerability into it, and that’s what he’s done with his cover project of my album 1989. When I first heard that Ryan was going to be covering my entire album, I couldn’t believe it. It’s such an honor that he would want to take my stories and lyrics and give them a new life. He’s gotten some of the best musicians together to record this album and if the clips he’s released are any indication, this is going to be something really special."
— Taylor Swift, August 20 2015[7]

One month later, in an interview with both Adams and Swift a day after the album was released, Swift ushered praise and adulation upon Adams' work, and expressed the ways in which his interpretation of the songs differs from her own, stating that "they’re not cover songs" in the commonly expected sense. "They’re reimaginings of my songs, and you can tell that he was in a very different place emotionally when he put his spin on them than I was when I wrote them. There’s this beautiful aching sadness and longing in this album that doesn’t exist in the original."[8] In the same interview, she also admitted that (after having spent time listening to an advanced copy of his album) some of Adams' melodies were beginning to pervade her songs during touring performances.[8]

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
SourceRating
Metacritic69/100[9]
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[10]
American Songwriter[11]
The A.V. ClubA-[12]
The Boston GlobePositive[13]
Entertainment WeeklyA-[14]
Los Angeles TimesPositive[15]
Pitchfork4/10[16]
Slant Magazine[17]
Sputnikmusic3.9/5[18]
The Telegraph[19]

Adams' interpretation of 1989 received mostly positive feedback from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 from selected independent ratings and reviews from mainstream critics, the album received a metascore of 69 out of 100, based on 25 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[9]

Entertainment Weekly's Leah Greenblatt praised the album, commenting "If turning the biggest, shiniest pop record of the past year into a survey course in classic rock economy sounds like a novelty, it is. But it's also the best kind--one that brings two divergent artists together in smart, unexpected ways, and somehow manages to reveal the best of both of them."[14] Jim Beviglia of American Songwriter also complimented the album, stating "It is 1989 reimagined, with often startling results."[11] On a similar note, the A.V. Club's Annie Zaleski said of the album in her review: "What his version of 1989 does best is illustrate the strength of the source material. With the radio-ready gloss stripped away, these songs compare to the best moments in Swift’s back catalog."[12] Jon Caramanica of The New York Times, however, called the album, "a love letter from an indie idol to a pop queen," and considered Adams "not built for the songs."[20] In a similarly negative review, Mark Richardson of Pitchfork Media declared, "Adams has transformed (1989) into ... a run-of-the-mill Ryan Adams album."[16]

Accolades

Publication Rank List
Diffuser 8 The 50 Best Albums of 2015[21]
Entertainment Weekly 40 The 40 Best Albums of 2015[22]
NME 50 NME's Albums of the Year 2015[23]
Paste 40 The 50 Best Albums of 2015[24]
Rough Trade 99 Albums of the Year 2015[25]
Huffington Post 8 Albums of the Year 2015[26]

Track listing

No. TitleWriter(s) Length
1. "Welcome to New York"  Taylor Swift, Ryan Tedder 3:18
2. "Blank Space"  Swift, Max Martin, Shellback 3:21
3. "Style"  Swift, Martin, Shellback, Ali Payami 2:44
4. "Out of the Woods"  Swift, Jack Antonoff 6:07
5. "All You Had to Do Was Stay"  Swift, Martin 3:30
6. "Shake It Off"  Swift, Martin, Shellback 4:06
7. "I Wish You Would"  Swift, Antonoff 3:44
8. "Bad Blood"  Swift, Martin, Shellback 3:55
9. "Wildest Dreams"  Swift, Martin, Shellback 5:21
10. "How You Get the Girl"  Swift, Martin, Shellback 3:50
11. "This Love"  Swift 4:45
12. "I Know Places"  Swift, Tedder 5:14
13. "Clean"  Swift, Imogen Heap 4:23
Total length:
 54:18

Personnel

Credits are adapted from liner notes of 1989.

Musicians
Technical personnel

Charts

1989 debuted at number 7 on the US Billboard 200 chart with 56,000 album-equivalent units. Taylor Swift's 1989, in its 48th week on the chart, was in the number 8 position.[2]

Chart (2015) Peak
position
Australian Albums (ARIA)[27] 9
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)[28] 9
Canadian Albums (Billboard)[29] 9
Dutch Albums (MegaCharts)[30] 21
Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)[31] 28
Irish Albums (IRMA)[32] 15
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[33] 18
Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)[34] 21
Spanish Albums (PROMUSICAE)[35] 78
Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)[36] 38
Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)[37] 58
UK Albums (OCC)[38] 19
US Billboard 200[39] 7
US Vinyl Albums (Billboard)[40] 2

Release history

Source: Amazon.com[41]

Date Region Format(s) Label
September 21, 2015 United States
  • digital download
 PAX AM
November 6, 2015 United States
  • CD
 PAX AM
December 11, 2015 United States
PAX AM

References

  1. ↑ "Ryan Adams Says Taylor Swift '1989' Cover Album Will Be Finished This Week". Retrieved 2015-09-21.
  2. 1 2 Caulfield, Keith (2015-09-27). "Both Taylor Swift and Ryan Adams' '1989' Albums Are in Top 10 of Billboard 200 Chart". Billboard. Retrieved 2015-09-28.
  3. 1 2 3 O'Donnell, Kevin (21 September 2015). "Ryan Adams opens up about his Taylor Swift 1989 cover album". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
  4. ↑ "The Complete History (So Far) of Ryan Adams' Taylor Swift Cover Project". Retrieved 2015-09-21.
  5. ↑ "The Story Behind Ryan Adams's '1989′ Homage to Taylor Swift". WSJ Blogs - Speakeasy. 2015-09-21. Retrieved 2015-09-23.
  6. ↑ "@TheRyanAdams Cool I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight or ever again and I'm going to celebrate today every year as a holiday. I'M CALM". Twitter. 2015-08-06. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  7. ↑ "Taylor Swift says Ryan Adams' 1989 cover album is 'such an honor'". Entertainment Weekly. 2015-08-20. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  8. 1 2 "Taylor Swift Surprised Ryan Adams on a Radio Show to Talk About 1989". TIME. 2015-09-21. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  9. 1 2 "Reviews for 1989 by Ryan Adams". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
  10. ↑ Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "1989 - Ryan Adams". AllMusic. All Media Network. Retrieved 2015-09-25.
  11. 1 2 Beviglia, Jim (2015-09-21). "Ryan Adams: 1989". American Songwriter. Retrieved 2015-09-23.
  12. 1 2 Annie Zaleski. "Ryan Adams transforms Taylor Swift's 1989 into a melancholy masterpiece". The A.V. Club. The Onion. Retrieved 2015-09-21.
  13. ↑ Reed, James (2015-09-22). "Ryan Adams turns Taylor Swift's '1989' into mellow gold". The Boston Globe. John W. Henry. Retrieved 2015-09-23.
  14. 1 2 Greenblatt, Leah (2015-09-21). "1989 by Ryan Adams: EW Review". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2015-09-22.
  15. ↑ Wood, Mikael (2015-09-21). "Ryan Adams turns to Taylor Swift for help on his version of '1989'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2015-09-22.
  16. 1 2 Richardson, Mark (2015-09-25). "Ryan Adams, 1989". Pitchfork. Retrieved 2015-09-25.
  17. ↑ "Slant review".
  18. ↑ K., Rudy (2015-09-22). "Review: Ryan Adams - 1989". Sputnikmusic. Retrieved 2015-09-23.
  19. ↑ McCormick, Neil (2015-09-22). "Ryan Adams, 1989, review: 'beautifully evokes the ghosts in Taylor Swift's pop machine'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2015-09-23.
  20. ↑ Caramanica, Jon (2015-09-22). "Teaming Up, Together (Drake and Future) or Apart (Ryan Adams and Taylor Swift)". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-09-23.
  21. ↑ Diffuser Staff (2015-12-08). "The 50 Best Albums of 2015". Diffuser. Retrieved 2015-12-12.
  22. ↑ EW Staff (2015-12-09). "The 40 Best Albums of 2015". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2015-12-12.
  23. ↑ NME Staff (2015-12-02). "NME's Albums of the Year 2015". NME. Retrieved 2015-12-12.
  24. ↑ Paste Staff (2015-12-02). "The 50 Best Albums of 2015". Paste. Retrieved 2015-12-12.
  25. ↑ Rough Trade Staff. "Albums of the Year 2015". Rough Trade. Retrieved 2015-12-12.
  26. ↑ Kristi York Wooten. "The Best Albums of 2015 2015". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2015-12-20.
  27. ↑ "Australiancharts.com – Ryan Adams – 1989". Hung Medien. Retrieved 2015-09-26.
  28. ↑ "Ultratop.be – Ryan Adams – 1989" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 2015-11-06.
  29. ↑ "Ryan Adams – Chart history" Billboard Canadian Albums Chart for Ryan Adams. Retrieved 2015-09-29.
  30. ↑ "Dutchcharts.nl – Ryan Adams – 1989" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved 2015-11-06.
  31. ↑ "Ryan Adams: 1989" (in Finnish). Musiikkituottajat – IFPI Finland. Retrieved 2015-12-20.
  32. ↑ "GFK Chart-Track Albums: Week 39, 2015". Chart-Track. IRMA. Retrieved 2015-09-25.
  33. ↑ "Charts.org.nz – Ryan Adams – 1989". Hung Medien. Retrieved 2015-09-25.
  34. ↑ "VG-lista - Topp 40 Album uke 41, 2015". Lista.vg.no. Retrieved 2015-10-13.
  35. ↑ "Spanishcharts.com – Ryan Adams – 1989". Hung Medien. Retrieved 2015-10-5.
  36. ↑ "Swedishcharts.com – Ryan Adams – 1989". Hung Medien. Retrieved 2015-09-27.
  37. ↑ "Swisscharts.com – Ryan Adams – 1989". Hung Medien. Retrieved 2015-11-11.
  38. ↑ "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 2015-09-26.
  39. ↑ "Ryan Adams – Chart history" Billboard 200 for Ryan Adams. Retrieved 2015-09-28.
  40. ↑ "Vinyl Albums : Jan 02, 2016". Billboard. Retrieved January 17, 2016.
  41. ↑ "Ryan Adams: 1989: Music". Amazon.com. ASIN B015I145OC. Retrieved 2015-11-10.
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