All You Had To Do Was Stay - Ryan Adams

All You Had To Do Was Stay - Ryan Adams

3:30

1989, 2015

Written by Taylor Swift and Max Martin, 2014

It's pretty audacious to cover an entire album, and extremely daring to do it only a year after the original was released.  Adams strips away some of the high-production gloss of Swift's song, but somehow fails to make it raw, warm, or intimate.  The music might be handmade, but Adams' voice sounds echoey and distant, with the grandiose emotion of an arena belter, not, for example, a broken-hearted singer in a nightclub.  The monotonous percussion doesn't help much.

Let It Ride - Ryan Adams & the Cardinals

Let It Ride - Ryan Adams & the Cardinals

3:23

Cold Roses, 2005

Written by Ryan Adams, JP Bowersock, Cindy Cashdollar, Brad Pemberton and Catherine Popper

Adams is here in full country mode, light on the alt-, with the twang and the pedal steel and the lyrics all about the Tennessee and the Cumberland, and drinking and fucking up ("Loaded like a sailor / Tumbling off a ferry boat / I was at the bar till three").  The band is crackerjack, and the melody is sweet, with nice old-time Western guitar flourishes.  It's a fine song, and I like it, but Adams' simple lyrics and nice but bland voice simple don't get me here the way, say, the Old 97's and Son Volt do. 

Ashes & Fire - Ryan Adams

Ashes & Fire - Ryan Adams

3:45

Ashes & Fire, 2011

Written by Ryan Adams

Title trax!

The glossy production of this song hides the old-timey feel of the lyrics, with their references to Bowery bums, sailboats, and "Roosevelt pie."  The image-laden lyrics flicker like a movie, showing glimpses of a man determined to leave, a crying woman, a "heart made of ashes and fire."  Benmont Tench's saloon piano buoy the song along.  It's a singer-songwriter song, elegant and spare, touching country and rock and pop and folk traditions.