Review: Ryan Adams turns to Taylor Swift for help on his version of ‘1989’

What if “The End of the Innocence� meant as much to Taylor Swift as “Like a Prayer�?

That’s one of many questions that animates Ryan Adams’ “1989,� on which the crafty alt-country singer reimagines Swift’s blockbuster pop album as a polished roots-rock disc. Here his lodestars aren’t Madonna or Fine Young Cannibals, as Swift has identified hers, but Don Henley and Tom Petty (whose “Full Moon Fever� also came out in 1989).

Nobody who’s followed Adams’ career will be surprised by how deftly he channels the sound of that era. In the decade and a half since he released his solo debut, “Heartbreaker,� Adams has explored just about every variety of American guitar music, from stripped-down folk tunes to thrashing punk jams to arena-scaled anthems.

Last year, in addition to a self-titled collection of slick but moody rock songs, Adams put out “1984,� a pitch-perfect homage to old-school hardcore bands like Hüsker Dü.

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So naturally he gets the booming drums and chorus-effect guitars just right in his versions of “Wildest Dreams,� “Welcome to New York� and “Bad Blood.� In “Style,� he changes Swift’s reference to “that James Dean daydream look in your eye� to “that ‘Daydream Nation’ look in your eye� – a winking acknowledgment of the Sonic Youth album that had people talking at the time.

Yet Adams, who recorded “1989� at his Pax-Am studio in Hollywood, isn’t merely playing an elaborate record-nerd game. He goes deep into Swift’s songs, clearly relating to her lyrics about broken relationships, as in “All You Had to Do Was Stay� -- “Why’d you have to go and lock me out?� he wonders with a sob in his voice -- and “Blank Space,� where he adds an unprintable modifier to emphasize how reckless he and his ex were.

The celebrity subtext here – and there’s no dismissing the celebrity subtext in anything related to Swift – is Adams’ recent split from his wife, Mandy Moore. On a practical level, of course, their separation is likely what inspired Adams to undertake this project, given that the guy suddenly had a lot of free time on his hands (and a gear-packed clubhouse in which to spend it).

But in his appealingly ragged singing you can also hear the mixture of dismay and gratitude that any pop listener brings to a song that captures precisely what he or she is going through. It’s there in “I Wish You Would,� about regretting your actions when it’s too late to change them, and “I Know Places,� about the pressure that public scrutiny can put on a couple. And it’s there in Adams’ cautiously optimistic take on “Clean,� in which the narrator finally shakes the last trace of a bad breakup.

An obsessive self-chronicler, Adams will almost certainly write his own songs about whatever went down between him and Moore. Until then, though, you get the sense that he’s using “1989� to answer another question: Has anyone else ever felt like this?

Twitter: @mikaelwood

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