If, as a Ryan Adams fan, you thought you’d get to live out the rest of your years without hearing Taylor Swift’s last album, you may need to reassess. According to a series of Instagram and Twitter videos posted on Thursday, Adams looks to be recording a full cover version of Swift’s 1989.
“Guaranteed saddest version of Welcome to New York ever – or your tears back,” he wrote, under an Instagram photograph of the lyrics to the song that opens album 1989. Under a later photo of single Blank Space’s lyrics, he deemed his version one with a “deep end Smiths vibe”.
Using the hashtag #1989, he posted various photographs and video snippets of the fruits of his unexpected labour in the studio. Mentions of the Smiths continued, with Adams tweeting early on Friday morning: “All You Had to Do Was Stay sounds like the Cars or the Smiths if either were in Eddie and The Cruisers #1989 EXCITED!!”
Journalist Hasief Ardiasyah tweeted Swift about Adams’ videos, and she replied excitedly: “is this true??????? I WILL PASS OUT”. Indeed, Adams confirmed, he was working on some of her “bad-ass tunes”.
This isn’t Adams’s first stab at pop covers. During his recent world tour, he tried his hand at stripped-back versions of Bryan Adams’s Summer of 69 and Foo Fighters’ Times Like These. Adams has yet to confirm an official release of the cover album.
