TAYLOR AND RYAN TALK 1989

In celebration of the release of Ryan Adams' 1989 cover album, Zane Lowe interviewed Blue Note's folky troubadour today on his Beats 1 radio show. As we hinted on Thursday, Big Machine muse Taylor Swift made sure to call and chime in. Listen to the full chat here:


Adams praises Swift on her ability to write the perfect song and shares that she's one of the only artists to give him that emotional lump in his throat while covering. Feeling a bit broken down last year, he claims that he heard the pop tour-de-force and was inspired to record it "like it was Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska."

Throughout the half-hour, he openly gushes about Swift, explaining "the undeniable force of her personality comes through in her music. There are certain people, like Keith Richards, who have that thing."

To have someone like Adams—a critic's favorite and underground icon—back her like that, truly solidifies Swift's stance as a songwriter.

When she calls in, she openly gushes right back. "I think that the album is absolutely gorgeous. You can tell it was something that was well thought-out. You can tell it was something that was conceptualized; it was not thrown together... They're not cover songs. They're like re-imaginings of my songs. And you can tell he was in a very different place emotionally we he put his spin on them... There's this beautiful, aching sadness and longing in this album that doesn't exist in the original."

And in case you we're wondering, his renditions of "Blank Space" and "How You Get the Girl" are tied as her favorite songs from the set.