Archives for July 2021

Certain Songs #2155: Ryan Adams – “Chains of Love”

July 30, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Ashes & Fire
Year: 2011

. . .

And so Ryan Adams continued to release music at an insane — though not Pollardesque — throughout the 2000s. Most of it was with a band, The Cardinals, and most of it was good and occasionally great. The exception was 29, his third album of 2005, which was neither with the Cardinals nor any good.

And while I enjoyed all of them just fine, none of the individual songs really ever broke through. Not until he dumped the band and made a classic singer-songwriter album with big name studio musicians and an even bigger name producer, one Glyn Johns. Which looking back on it, is weird: I usually prefer albums that singer songwriters record with their regular band, so I’m not sure what the issue was.

Certain Songs #2154: Ryan Adams – “Don’t Even Know Her Name”

July 29, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Morrocan Role EP
Year: 2004

. . .

Because of his ridiculous ability to write and record songs, Ryan Adams started augmenting his regular full-length albums with singles & EPs, some of which were physical and some of which were digital-only. I’m not sure of the digital-only Morrocan Role EP was the first of these, but it contains one of his greatest songs, “Don’t Even Know Her Name.”

Certain Songs #2153: Ryan Adams – “English Girls Approximately”

July 28, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Love is Hell
Year: 2003

. . .

Anyways, here’s the album with “Wonderwall.”

So remember yesterday when I traced how Ryan Adams’s Love is Hell album was initially rejected by his record company, and so he wrote, recorded and released Rock N Roll instead? Here’s the rest of the story.

Certain Songs #2152: Ryan Adams – “1974”

July 27, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rock N’ Roll
Year: 2003

. . .

Perhaps Ryan Adams could have capitalized on the relative success of 2001’s Gold if he wasn’t continually feuding with his record company.

First, there was 2002’s Demolition, which was a compromise compilation from the three albums he’d recorded after Gold, and while that kind of distillation could have resulted in something special, it didn’t quite cohere, though “Nuclear” and “Starting to Hurt” are both good songs.

Certain Songs #2151: Ryan Adams – “The Rescue Blues”

July 20, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Gold
Year: 2001

. . .

After the relative focus of Heartbreaker, Ryan Adams’ next album was intended to be his breakthrough, which it both was and wasn’t, a big sprawling double-album that would show off all of his many moods and gifts. That album, of course, was called Gold, and it remains his best-selling record, two decades on.

Gold had the bad luck to come out in two weeks of the 9/11 terror attacks, when people were still trying to figure out if they should be paying attention to pop culture, and it had the good luck to have as its opening song and lead single a song called “New York, New York,” which featured a video shot just a few days prior to the attacks, and featured a lot of footage of Ryan performing with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the background. This, of course, wasn’t through any sense of prescience, but it was kinda just what you did.

Certain Songs #2150: Ryan Adams – “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High)”

July 19, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Heartbreaker
Year: 2000

. . .

So while I’d originally figured that when I got to Ryan Adams I would spend a lot of time discussing how in the past two decades he never topped Strangers Almanac and Pneumonia, the final two Whiskeytown albums, while still writing and recording a bunch of songs that I well and truly loved.

Instead, I want to start by acknowledging all of the various stories that have come about Ryan controlling, emotionally abusing and creeping on various women over the years, and say that I believe each and every single one. To the point where I thought about just skipping writing about him altogether.

Certain Songs #2149: The Rutles – Ouch!

July 16, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Rutles
Year: 1978

. . .

I’m not sure why 1978 produced not one but two definitive parodies of the career arc of The Beatles.

Maybe because it was long enough from the breakup that people could have enough perspective, but before John Lennon’s murder, after which these kind of things might have felt in bad taste.

Certain Songs #2148: Rush – “Time Stand Still”

July 15, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Hold Your Fire
Year: 1987

. . .

After “New World Man,” I lost the plot. I got swept in the alt-rock world of KFSR and college radio, and basically stopped paying attention what Rush was doing. For about 30 years.

I know I saw some videos on MTV and heard songs on the mainstream radio when I was stuck listening to it, but I just wasn’t interested anymore, even as their music continued to keep pace with the times, as albums like Grace Under Pressure and Hold Your Fire doubled down on the keyboards and 1980s production values. Ironically some of those synth-heavy 1980s production values song might have gotten Rush airplay on some of the more synth-oriented college and alt-rock radio stations, had they not been, you know, Rush.

Certain Songs #2147: Rush – “New World Man”

July 14, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Signals
Year: 1982

. . .

After Moving Pictures, Rush sought to cap their highly successful run of albums by recording their second live album, Exit… Stage Left in late 1981. It was a record that I was actively looking forward too: I’d seen and enjoyed the Moving Pictures tour, and if you look at the track listing for Exit… Stage Left, it’s pretty much impeccable. So I was surprised at how much I disliked it.

Certain Songs #2146: Rush – “Limelight”

July 13, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Moving Pictures
Year: 1981

. . .

All things considered, “Limelight” is probably my favorite Rush song, and is definitely on the short list of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Prog Divsion.

I did a fair amount of reading about Rush in prep for all of this, and of my takeaways was that Alex Lifeson was the always-joking extrovert, and Neal Peart was the bookish introvert. Which left Geddy in the middle like Derek Smalls, I guess. Anyways, after Permanent Waves made Rush huge stars once and for all, Peart penned a set of lyrics that perfectly described his ambivalence about the whole situation, kind of a precursor to the things future reluctant rock stars like Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder and Billy Corgan might say in interviews.