Ryan Adams
1989 (PaxAmericana/Blue Note)

At surface level, Ryan Adams’s full-album tribute to Taylor Swift’s 1989 screams of gimmickry. After all, folksy covers of mainstream pop songs are usually best suited to dorm-room parties and campfire sing-alongs, not major releases such as this one. To Adams’s credit, however, his take on 1989 is more than just a curious stylistic exercise, and he manages to inject his own personality into these world-conquering hit songs.

He worked on these covers in the wake of his split with ex-wife Mandy Moore, and his sense of heartbreak is palpable when he transforms the defiant anthems “Blank Space” and “Shake It Off” into mournful late-night ballads. Haters gonna hate, but these versions are better suited to wallowing than shaking it off.

Beyond changing the emotional tone of 1989, Adams takes significant liberties with the material. He edits a number of the lyrics—particularly the gendered pronouns—and alters some of the melodies. His heartland-rock adaptation of “Welcome to New York” tweaks the chorus hook to be rueful rather than triumphant, while his 6/8 strumming on “Out of the Woods” makes it scarcely recognizable as the same song as the danceable original.

Although these renditions confirm Adams’s skill as an arranger, his reworking of 1989 succeeds primarily because of the strength of the original songs. If Adams can convince a few narrow-minded rockists to listen to Swift’s fantastic pop hit, then this album will have served a worthy purpose.