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.
Meanwhile, Ryan just kept recording songs and starting feuds with people like Jack White and generally acting like an asshole, while working with Smiths producer John Porter of a group of songs for an album that was going to be called Love Is Hell, but the record company didn’t like it, maybe because it had too many mid-tempo Smithsy songs.
So Ryan gathered up a drummer named Johnny T, and some friends like Billie Joe Armstrong & Melissa Auf Du Mar and just cranked out a bunch of big-riffed uptempo songs that also had their roots in the 1980s and called it Rock N Roll, and it was incredibly divisive. For example, Pitchfork gave it a 2.9, calling it “sloppy and stupidly rushed.”
And gentle reader, that is exactly why Rock N Roll is my favorite Ryan Adams solo album. For once, he didn’t overthink things: he just turned up the amps and let it rip, stealing from U2 on “Luminol” and “So Alive,” Smiths on “Anybody Wanna Take Me Home” and “Burning Photographs” and the Replacements everywhere else. I mean, those are all bands that I love, so I don’t see a problem. There are a shit ton of jokes, my favorite being that the title track of his rockingest album is a slow piano ballad.
Add all of that to his natural ability to craft hooks and you get a song like “1974,” which comes roaring out with a meaty guitar arguing with a jangly guitar while Ryan screams the words:
The sun is shining hard at my feet
The city is an animal ready to eat
And it’s raining like a nose bleed, cigarettes and sweets
I feel it coming on
Bloody as the day I was bornIt’s 1974
Just like the day I was born
It’s 1974
In the end, while he repeats “it’s 1974” over a few times, he adds a near-psychedelic second riff, and, to me at least, it is fucking magical. Your mileage may vary, I suppose.
“1974”
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The Certain Songs Database
A filterable, searchable & sortable somewhat up to date database with links to every “Certain Song” post I’ve ever written.
Certain Songs Spotify playlist
(It’s recommended that you listen to this on Spotify as their embed only has 200 songs.)
Support “Certain Songs” with a donation on Patreon
Go to my Patreon page