Ryan Adams "Gold" [2001]

Just when you thought it was safe to listen to Mellencamp-free radio, here comes heartland shmendrick Ryan Adams. Perhaps with the installation of George W. Bush as president, Adams' record company thought Reagan-era aesthetics would come back in a big way; we were too smart for that this time around, though -- Ryan Adams likely still gets confused with the guy who wrote "Summer of '69." More to the point, he jumps hip-deep into a musical cornfield so stale, he's acting like The Band is still on the cover of Time magazine. Maybe Adams is just confused about where he is and what he's doing. I mean, how clueless does one have to be to write a country-pop song and call it "New York, New York"? This guy sounds like David Grey with cowshit stuck to his shoes. Shows you that 2001 was one horrible year for pop music that this guy was touted as one of the up-and-comers; all the label execs probably thought we were all going to hell anyway, with file sharing threatening to drive everyone into bankruptcy. Then 9-11 happened, and two weeks later the "Gold" CD hits the stores. I can totally imagine how it all must have played out: "Fuck it, let's just release the goddamn thing. Not like anything matters anymore, anyway." So they put an American flag on the cover to hook insecure Americans into buying it, but then everybody brought the album home and thought to themselves, "Hey -- isn't the 'Summer of '69' guy originally from Canada?"