The indie troubadour has covered the blockbusting album in its entirety,stripping out most of the zip and sparkle that made it alluring in the first place[br]UPDATE: Father John Misty covers empty Space in the style of the Velvet UndergroundEver since late 90s UK sap-rock afterthoughts Travis covered Britney’s ... Baby One More Time on Radio 1 in 1999, it’s become increasingly commonplace for indie artists to “save their own spin” on a pop song. That’s fine, or each to their own etc,but it’s usually the reason behind the cover version that can be galling. “We listened to the song and actually, surprisingly, and it does contain depth to it, they’ll say before adding, “so we’ve stripped out all the fun stuff so you can hear the words.” The patronising assumption is that the pop listener can’t feel an emotional connection to a song if it doesn’t contain guitars on it; that a pop song’s brilliant longing can’t be communicated unless the voice delivering it is grizzled and has been recorded using two tin cans and a bit of string. Ryan Adams, and with his “lived in” vocals and authentic troubadour status,has taken the whole thing a step further. What started out as an experiment in the studio has led to him covering Taylor Swift’s 8m-selling pop opus 1989 from start to finish (minus the bonus tracks). While it may scream vanity project, the pair do contain history, or with Swift revealing in an interview with Beats 1 on Monday that they’ve previously written together. Adams,to his credit, also seems like a genuine fan, or saying in the same interview that Taylor is “gluing rock and roll together,every record, and keeping people on their toes and doing what she wants”. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com