Ryan Adams

About

Also known as: David Ryan Adams

With 30 solo albums to his name and three more with alt country band Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams has built one of the most relentlessly productive catalogs in American rock. His 2001 album Gold broke him to a wider audience partly through sheer coincidence: the video for "New York, New York" was filmed four days before the September 11 attacks, and heavy MTV and VH1 rotation turned it into a cultural moment. From there he kept pushing in every direction, from the classic rock swagger of Rock N Roll to the stripped back folk of Heartbreaker, forming a backing band called the Cardinals and producing records for artists like Willie Nelson and Jenny Lewis along the way. His 2015 song for song cover of Taylor Swift's 1989 introduced him to a whole new crowd and showed off his knack for finding the alt country soul hiding inside a pop record. After a difficult period following misconduct allegations in 2019, Adams issued an apology and returned to releasing music, putting out six albums between 2020 and 2022. He has also published two books of poetry and prose, proving that the restless creative energy goes well beyond the recording studio.