Ryan Adams' 1989 is the best concept album of 2015

Early this year, alt.country darling Ryan Adams posted a short snippet of a Taylor Swift cover on twitter and facebook. More was said to be on the way. A joke? A clever ploy to get the tens of millions of 'swifties' as Taylor's fans call themselves to listen to his music too? Neither, it turns out, as Ryan Adams' 1989 is on the digital shelves: physical releases are coming. What emerges: 1989 is breathtaking. Retrospectively in both versions, because who realised that behind the wagonload of production Swift hid such strong songs? [hints]Here the vision of one fan site[/hints] 

'Searching for a sound we hadn't heard before'

To call Taylor Swift a phenomenon is an understatement. Her first records were already selling well, with 1989, released in 2014, she became a global star. With accompanying performances that rivalled Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus. Controversies about whether or not music videos were racist, supermodels as girlfriends, famous bedfellows, enfin, Madonna from the mid-1980s onwards also followed naturally, all over, all over.

Swift did not live through that decade. But by using her birth year as a starting point for the sound of what is at its core a series of songs about her breakup with One Direction star Harry Styles, her 1989 as a modernised version of MTV in exactly that year.

Rightly noted The Guardian right away:

It's bold enough in its homage to take on one vintage sound thus far avoided by 80s revivalists - the booming, stage-filling snare sound that all artists were legally obliged to use for the latter half of the decade.

'We never go out of style'

That second half of the 1980s Ryan Adams listened to totally different records. The Smiths, Sonic Youth, U2 and a wagonload of what we now call americana or alt.country and the genre that Taylor Swift is from. Not for nothing did Adams and Swift, before her world fame, record a number of demos. The difference between the two is actually not that great either. Take, for instance, the accusation that Swift's lyrics mainly deal with which famous boyfriend is either on or off again. The same applies to Ryan Adams, see his relationships with Winona Ryder and Alanis Morissette (both untrue), which appear in all gossip columns. It is precisely this similarity that Adams is now using extremely deftly.

For what Ryan Adams' 1989 Distinct from previous Swift covers by, say, Pavements Stephen Malkmus, Madonna's 'Like a virgin' by Teenage Fanclub or Adams' own covers of 'I want it that way' (Backstreet Boys) and 'Summer of '69' (by that other Adams, no relation) is not so much that Adams covers an entire album from a to z. Nor is the lack of an ironic wink new. What is truly remarkable about Adams' 1989 is that he meticulously adopted Swift's idea. With a radically different-sounding result.

'Nothing lasts for ever, but this is getting good now'

Adams wanted 1989 originally recorded as bare as possible on a four-track recorder, completely analogue, following Springsteen's Nebraska. Just at home. But after four songs, Adams saw the device eating the tape. Analogue proved unruly, even destructive, forcing Adams to start all over again. So into the studio anyway, and why not use all the possibilities?

A golden touch, as stripped of Swift's imaginary late-1980s sound, but guided by his own memories of 1989 rather than merely bare - of which we see soporific examples too often at The World Turned Door - Swifts songs turn out to be rock solid. Who would have thought that 'Bad love' is a country ballad? 'Style' a song by U2 when they were still exciting? And 'Wildest dreams' must be a cover by The Smiths, just as 'Welcome to New York' has been used by Bruce Springsteen for decades to play a stadium flat again.

'And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate'

Ryan Adams thus makes the ultimate dadrock which is so prominently featured in magazines such as Rolling Stone and Uncut. The Dutch Ear well over a decade has been writing mainly for the ageing music lover. Adams cleverly combines the forty-something nostalgic for the 'alternative' sound of the late 1980s with the hits his children like now. Another dadrock-love Wilco used Star wars and cute kittens to highlight the latest record, but that's so outdated. It's 2015, stupid!

Too cynical?

Maybe, but this so-called authenticity has been mostly cultivated since the 1970s. From the 'fuck me, I'm so sensitive' of James Taylor, to the endless pondering and then playing with credibility of superstars like, there they are again, U2 and Bruce Springsteen. And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as it results in good records.

'And that's how it works, that's how you get the girl'

Meanwhile, we hear on 1989 Ryan Adams and above all still not. On his last studio album he sounded like stadium rocker Bryan Adams, the album before that was his version of a Jackson Browne record and before that again we heard everything from the Stones to Dylan, from The Strokes to Grateful Dead, from forced new wave to folk.

And then comes the realisation: Adams is the Bowie of americana, bouncing in all directions. Perhaps sometimes sincere, sometimes not. But who cares when the result is the best concept album of 2015.

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