Quick one this time!
I was working with one of my favourite students (Mike) on some guitar-y songs, and how to meld singing and guitar playing together, and we got talking about songwriters who do this really well.
John Mayer is a great one, Chris Cornell is pretty cool too, and there many others too numerous to mention, but today I wanted to highlight Ryan Adams.
Ryan Adams
Way back in the early 00s, I remember my Mum buying a copy of ‘Easy Tiger’, one of Ryan Adams’ earlier albums… and I didn’t ‘get it’ then. I Was more interested in heavy rock and intense guitar solos (rah!) at least at that time.
But now the songwriter scene is MASSIVE. EVERYONE and their Mum is a ‘singer-songwriter’… how many of your friends have ‘singer-songwriter’ on their Twitter account?
I’m not knocking it! It’s just what’s trendy right now.
A seminal singer-songwriter
Yet, despite it being a big thing now, Ryan Adams is (IMO) the earliest example of a true singer-songwriter. Someone who wrote lots of songs (good to great songs) and performed them… and he’s still going. To me, even though I didn’t appreciate him at the time, he is one of the earliest ‘seeds’ of the singer-songwriter ‘movement’ (if you can call it that). Someone who knew what he wanted to produce, didn’t say no, didn’t give up, and kept doing what he wanted. Now loads of others are doing that it’s not quite the pioneering genre it once was (every episode of Scrubs and House ended up having a singer-songwriter song playing it out… now every mobile and energy company advert has a singer-songwriter in the background), but cast your ear back 12-13 years, and you’ll find Ryan Adams doing it all from scratch even then.
As an artist, I think Ryan Adams is the real deal. Someone who knows what he wants, and spends time developing and crafting it.
See for yourself…
Just watch this fab video of his song ‘Lucky Now’. It’s not got the most incredible vocals in the world, it’s not ear-shredding guitar, but it hangs together as a complete piece… and he sells the piece. To me, this is the sign of a complete artist, and beginning singer-songwriters could do far worse than to learn from Ryan Adams and take a leaf out of his book.
Remember to watch this version…