To honor Taylor Swift’s latest rerecording, we’re celebrating 1989 (Taylor’s Version) Week at The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. That means we’re throwing it back to 2014, to relive everything that Taylor—and the rest of pop culture—was up to.
All week, we at The Daily Beast’s Obsessed have been revisiting Taylor Swift’s 1989 era: a pivotal time in her career where she was the biggest pop star. She was the moment; she was “the man,” years before she would proclaim herself as such. So it’s almost easy to forget that, at the same time she was outselling and outcharting her peers, she was also at the center of one of 2015’s biggest and most exhausting debates in pop music, all thanks to Ryan Adams.
What’s that? You forgot that troubled troubadour Adams, in a weird move that either made him an unhinged troll or the biggest Swiftie ever, released a track-by-track cover of 1989 almost a year after Swift’s blockbuster album? You’d be forgiven for forgetting it entirely, both because it had virtually no ripple effect after its initial splash, and because conversations around Adams have soured in recent years after the many sexual misconduct and harassment allegations leveled against him (more on that later).
At the time of its release, though, Adams’ 1989 was all anyone with a Twitter account could talk about. It arrived on Sept. 21, 2015, almost 11 months after Swift’s 1989, and debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200. Its release came after weeks of Adams teasing the project and talking ad nauseam about how he connected intensely to Swift’s songs during a period of loneliness, following the end of his marriage to Mandy Moore. Swift, for her part, was the album’s biggest cheerleader; after he announced it online, she enthusiastically tweeted, “Cool I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight or ever again and I’m going to celebrate today every year as a holiday.”
Despite some people’s initial inclination to cast Adams as a prankster and dismiss his 1989 as a stunt, all signs pointed to him actually being earnest and unironic, and wanting to respect Swift’s work. Even with the best intentions, though, Adams’ 1989 proved to be less about him or even the music itself, and more about the biases still rampant among music fans, even at a time when “poptimism” was all the rage.
The context of Swift’s career at the time is important: 1989 marked a major shift in her music, where she largely traded her guitar for synths and evolved from teenage country wunderkind to stadium-friendly pop icon. For an Americana dad-rocker like Adams, then, to invert her shimmering, capital-P pop album with his trademark acoustic-guitar seriousness was the strangest kind of swerve. Not only that, but Swift was also still tethered to a heavily scrutinized public image. Her friendships were skewered as homogeneous cliques and girl gangs, and she had a reputation as a conniving, man-eating try-hard. Adams, both as a man and an indie darling, never had to deal with that kind of public perception.
Likewise, with his version of 1989, 40-year-old Adams was praised for bringing “depth” to Swift’s so-called superficial pop album. A lot of that had to do with his arrangements of her songs; he channels Bruce Springsteen and The Cure on much of his 1989, stripping away all the Max Martin-crafted pop playfulness. He shreds “Blank Space” of its irony, dumping Swift’s spoken-word zingers and skipping the bridge entirely. In a couple of cringey lyric changes, he inserts a Sonic Youth reference into “Style” and grossly tweaks the line “Good girl faith and a tight little skirt” to “Good girl faith thing, ass so tight.”
The criticisms were, well, swift. He was called out for sucking the fun out of her music; for riding off her coattails; for “mansplaining” her songs; for using her album as an attempt to try to be relevant again. Why, many listeners asked, should it take a middle-aged white dude to highlight how brilliant a songwriter Swift is and make her songs more “palatable”?
That debate played out largely in critical reviews of the album, many of which were wrapped up in sexism and rockism. Some journalists praised Adams’ album over Swift’s, and others used the opportunity to begin paying attention to Swift for the first time. The most egregious example was Pitchfork, which famously had never reviewed any of Swift’s albums by that point, but did review Adams’ cover of 1989 upon its release. (The site would eventually go on to review Swift’s Reputation in 2017 before retroactively reviewing the rest of her discography two years later, as if the critics were fans all along.) In the New Yorker—which, like Pitchfork, reviewed Adams’ cover album having never reviewed the original—Ian Crouch wrote that “these songs, rearranged by Adams, might sound to some ears more authentic, raw, or genuine.” He opined in the same piece that, “If anything, Adams’s version of 1989 is more earnest and, in its way, sincere and sentimental than the original—suddenly more his than hers.”
For every GQ, which quipped in one headline about Adams’ album, “Finally, a Manly Way to Enjoy Taylor Swift!”, there was another outlet that got it all wrong. Forbes wrote, “Stripping that superfluous gunk away… Ryan Adams demonstrates that for all of the album’s original pop bombast, these songs are quite good.” The Boston Globe’s James Reed wrote that Adams’ album “even makes you appreciate Swift’s stealth songwriting,” hinting that the critic had probably never heard “All Too Well,” “Dear John,” or any of Swift’s prior work. And American Songwriter wrote that Adams “bestow[ed] indie-rock credibility” on her album, “showing her up by revealing depth and nuance in the songs.”
Eight years later, the argument about which version of 1989 is superior has mostly become null, considering Adams is persona non grata. In 2019, several women, including his ex-wife Moore and musician Phoebe Bridgers, came forward to accuse him of emotional abuse and sexual misconduct in a damning New York Times report. Bridgers, in particular, told the Times that she struck up a relationship with Adams when she was 20 and he was 40, claiming that he was emotionally abusive toward her and once exposed himself to her without her consent. Through that lens and with the benefit of hindsight, his decision to cover 1989—an album made by a young woman that resonated with legions of other young women—feels even ickier. Not to mention that Swift had her own #MeToo moment in 2017, when she successfully sued an ex-radio DJ for sexual assault. In recent years, she and Bridgers have become close friends, collaborators, and even tourmates.
That brings up one of the biggest mysteries surrounding this whole weird ordeal: how Swift really feels about Adams’ 1989. At the time, to her credit—or perhaps her naivete; it’s hard to know which—she was savvy about how she discussed his cover album. In the days after its release, she retweeted a bunch of praise for it and even appeared with Adams on Beats 1 radio, where she gushed about his interpretations of her songs. Considering that she didn’t have much to gain financially from his album—Billboard reported at the time that her earnings wouldn’t amount to much—you have to wonder what motivated her to so enthusiastically co-sign it. Maybe she really was that psyched and flattered by it. Maybe she wasn’t, but decided to get out in front of it by presenting a united front with Adams so she wouldn’t seem petty. Maybe she wanted to center herself in the conversation surrounding his album to remind people, “Hey, remember, I’m the one who wrote these songs you’re praising.” Maybe she was seeking approval from the indie crowd and bought into the belief that he made her songs “cool.” It would be fascinating to hear Swift’s thoughts on Adams’ 1989 now, especially in a post-Reputation era when she’s no longer shy about sharing her politics, speaking up for herself, or, vitally, fighting for ownership of her own work.
And that brings us to 1989 (Taylor’s Version). Looking at it now, it all seems so simple: This album was always, and will always, be hers and hers alone. 1989 (Ryan Adams’ Version) is best forgotten.
