To end another wonderful decade of great music, I’m going to write about ten albums from each of the last ten years, that are either great, or hold some sort of personal significance. A musical kiss off to 00s.
2000 – #10. Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker
(Bloodshot)
Just writing about the past can change it. Everyone’s view differs. But I can’t pretend that when this album came out, it wasn’t big in my world. But I can’t listen to a single note of it anymore. Ryan Adams is probably the musician I loathe the most in the world. He’s so far gone for me that it has ruined every good thing he’s ever done in my eyes (and ears). The wanker ruined a great album in Heartbreaker.
I realise I am in the minority in this. I cannot listen to an album by someone I despise. No matter how many times you tell me to just ‘listen to the music’, the music is still the expression of someone I find offensive and abhorrent.
The opposite, equally unpopular, result is that I would rather listen to mediocre albums by great musicians. I would listen to the worse Neil Young albums before this one, because at least Neil Young is an artist. Who has a perfect strike rate anyway?
So – like I said, it’s not a popular opinion, but a valid one. For example, I have complained loudly about Chris Brown in recent weeks. The man is a criminal. A wife beating criminal. If he lived on my street, we would go around and beat the shit out of him. He is a fucking criminal.
Yet, when I bring up – “how can anyone buy a Chris Brown album”, they bring up that Youtube wedding video, how he has been doing the publicity circuit… no one mentions the man is a villain.
Adams is not a criminal, but he is a moron, and a villain. Starting with two of the worse live shows I’ve ever seen, he continues to be an indulgent musician and wanker up there with Pete Doherty.
I have nothing to say about the music on this album. But the last time I even pretending to give a shit about this person (and, by default, his music), I read an interview where he bemoaned being a musician, how he has to do publicity, how his life is not his own.
Even in the article, the reporter points out that the person who is changing the sheets in your hotel room – their life is not their own either. You little pampered shit.
Ryan Adams represents, in retrospect, everything that was wrong with the ‘authentic’ vibe of alt-country. Which is this bullshit of having to prove you want to kill yourself more than the next guy. Sometimes I wish he really would prove it.
Goodbye 2000, goodbye alt-country, goodbye Ryan Adams. Fuck off.