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Sep 22, 2015By re-recording the whole of Taylor Swift's 1989, the maverick alt country star has turned a world beating chart smash album into a tender masterpiece of bruised Americana, in the process emphasising the perfect songcraft and exposing the dark heart of emotion beating beneath Swift's gleaming surfaces.
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Sep 21, 2015If 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.
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Sep 21, 2015What 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.
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Sep 22, 2015Taylor's original 1989 is made even more interesting and worthy of discussion by Ryan's overtly classic rock-ified version, while Ryan's version is intriguing as both a personal expression and a reaction to one of the biggest albums we're likely to see come along in our lifetimes.
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Sep 28, 2015The refusal to stick to one gender only adds to 1989‘s ubiquitous strength, making it less an album applicable to specific male/female relationships and more about relationships in general.
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Sep 23, 2015Ryan Adams unearths new emotional riches, mostly sad ones, from his source material. And his 1989 transcends mere tribute.
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Sep 25, 2015What’s most impressive about Adams’ 1989 is the experienced troubadour’s eye and ear with which he brings out the material’s underlying strengths, finding melancholy currents lurking beneath supposedly upbeat, celebratory songs.
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Sep 22, 2015If you didn’t already, it even makes you appreciate Swift’s stealth songwriting, particularly when scaled to its essence.
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Sep 21, 2015The crafty alt-country singer reimagines Swift’s blockbuster pop album as a polished roots-rock disc.
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Sep 21, 2015It is 1989 reimagined, with often startling results.
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Sep 22, 2015As gorgeous a Ryan Adams record as anything in his own catalog.
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Nov 4, 2015This 1989 may work wonderfully on its own terms (if Adams had written this himself it would be his best album) but its real strength is in highlighting Swift’s immaculate writing for those of us whose relationship to the original is intellectual rather than instinctive.
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Sep 24, 2015He can sound awkward navigating Swift’s vernacular of haters and mad love, but when he plays up his strengths--the fingerpicking and strings on “Blank Space,” or changing the “Style” lyric “James Dean daydream” to “Daydream Nation,” a nod to Sonic Youth--the universality of great songwriting shines through.
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Sep 22, 2015At its best, Adams' version of 1989 is an adoring homage to Swift's overlooked talent as a storyteller, though there are also a few key moments that fall flat without the high-gloss bombast that the originals were treated to.
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Oct 21, 2015Most of 1989 is much denser, without betraying Adams's inherent aesthetic.... Unfortunately, there are nearly as many misfires on 1989 as there are successful experiments.
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Oct 1, 2015The result: an album with zero purpose but worth a listen.
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Sep 30, 2015There's no disguising how Ryan Adams flips Taylor Swift's 1989 upside-down, turning a moment of triumph into bedsit introspection, a concept that is undoubtedly theoretically interesting, but the record works because Adams doesn't play this as a stunt.
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Sep 25, 2015So it isn’t better than Swift’s album, as that would be a pretty hard album to improve on. What Adams has done though is to look at it through another prism, and created a pure break-up album.
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Sep 25, 2015It’s just a shame that as entertaining as such popular revisionism can be, his 1989 will be remembered more as a curiosity than it does a full-bore artistic statement.
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Sep 24, 2015It plays like the latest chapter in his ongoing recent Tom-Petty-meets-the-Smiths re-imagining of the Reagan years.
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UncutOct 27, 2015There are worth while curiosities here: his "Bad Blood" is utterly tuneless, but "Blank Space" is appealingly tremulous. [Dec 2015, p.67]
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Sep 22, 2015Mr. Adams isn’t brave enough to depart meaningfully from the script. Where the songs work, it’s because of Ms. Swift’s bulletproof melodies. When they fail, it’s because of his conservatism.
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Nov 5, 2015There is comparatively little room for Adams and his mournful guitar. He may begin the likes of Bad Blood and Blank Space by unearthing appealing melodies from Swift’s harsh, mega-pop productions, but once the choruses kick in, Adams is at the mercy of their unyielding, playground-style chants.
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Sep 28, 2015All most of the candle-held-to-the-sun versions here reveal--from the hushed, sad, fingerpicky take on Blank Space to the hushed, sad, strummy take on Out of the Woods--is a strong urge to listen to Swift herself.
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Sep 25, 2015Adams' 1989, for all its sincerity and technical execution, is ultimately hollow because it's nothing but context.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 74 out of 122
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Mixed: 18 out of 122
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Negative: 30 out of 122
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Sep 22, 2015
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Sep 26, 2015
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Sep 22, 2015