Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a drill. In a turn of events that’s still just as surreal as when he first announced it, Ryan Adams’ 1989 cover album is finally coming out next Monday. We first heard teasers of the record on his Instagram a while ago, and it’s everything we expected – soft and mature, strings-based sounds that lend an almost ethereal quality to Taylor Swift’s pop hits like Shake it Off and Blank Space.
Now, radio megamind Zane Lowe has premiered Adams’ cover of Bad Blood, proving that the entire project isn’t just a weird musical dream. It’s a pretty spot-on matchmaking, all things considered – stripped back and slowed down, underscored by the kind of vaguely doleful acoustic instrumental that Adams does so well. The cover sounds almost mid-2000s in its bittersweet ballad quality, and it’s a nice rendering of Swift’s hardhitting and very aggressive original.
If this is the quality of the songs coming out of Adams’ cover album, we can’t wait for its release in just 4 days. Meanwhile, check out the cover of the album which he ‘grammed with a few teaser details of its release.