Ryan Adams is driving through a storm when I reach him — literally, not metaphorically, though he’ll get there too. “I’m stressed out, driving in the rain on the way to soundcheck in Pasadena,” he says. The weather, he notes, feels “very Midwestern,” the kind of thick, gray gloom that feels like it’s forecasting something larger. “Yeah, it’s like the streets are flooded with liberal tears,” he jokes.
That’s Ryan Adams: sardonic and self-aware, but always pushing toward something earnest underneath. In this case, the topic is his song “Doomsday,” released just hours before Donald Trump’s inauguration. It wasn’t subtle. “I did get a few of the usual messages,” Adams admits. “The ‘stick to music’ crowd. Like because I play guitar, I’m not allowed to care about people?” He laughs, but there’s exhaustion in it. “I don’t want to hear from those people. They’re just… fucked.”
Still, he’s noticed something surprising. “Lately, I’ve actually had people say, ‘I don’t agree with your politics, but I love your music.’ I’m like, wow. Civility. Haven’t seen that in a while. But I’m also suspicious—like, are you a Russian operative?”
It’s a rare moment of levity in what turns into a long, looping meditation on America’s moral decline. “It’s hard for me to deal with all this on a human level,” he says. “I’ve watched people die from diseases because they couldn’t afford treatment. And then you hear, ‘We’re gonna repeal Obamacare!’ And I’m like… do you even know that’s what’s keeping you alive? People don’t even realize they have it.”
He goes quiet for a second, then adds, “I don’t like the idea that anyone’s gonna get sick and no one cares.”
What follows is less of a political rant than a sermon about empathy, delivered between jokes about bald eagles (“one of the dumbest birds in history, apparently”) and mild disbelief that climate change is even debated. “It’s not like there’s a conspiracy of scientists,” he says. “People just want to keep their country-club memberships. Meanwhile, the planet’s literally choking.”
But Adams isn’t without hope — not exactly. “Three million more people voted for the other person,” he says, still talking about the 2016 election like a wound that hasn’t quite healed. “If enough people get activated in their communities, maybe we get through the next few years. Maybe we start believing in each other again.”
It’s not long before he turns the conversation into something cosmic, naturally. “We’re isolated in this solar system,” he says. “You’d think by now, humans would be a little worried about that — want to snuggle on the couch for a weekend, you know?” He laughs again. “Instead, it’s like Logan’s Run out there.”
The storm metaphor tracks: Adams’ worldview is dark but vividly alive. Which brings us back to “Doomsday,” a song whose title sounds prophetic but whose guitars shimmer like they’re made of — his word — lasers.
“I spent a lot of time listening to Def Leppard,” he explains. “I was like, how do I make my Strat sound like it’s made of lasers? There was this era of analog recording where people were trying to make songs sound bigger than reality. That’s what I wanted — this huge, hovering thing, like you could stand inside it.”
He name-checks Don Henley, Bruce Hornsby, and Hüsker Dü in one breath — pop craftsmen, soft-rock humanists, punk nihilists. “They all had that geography in their sound,” he says. “It’s like they were building giant spaces and standing in the middle of them.”
He talks about being a “metalhead in civilian life,” a phrase that could double as a mission statement. “I love it, I really do,” he says. “But good metal takes endurance and attention I probably don’t have. What happens when I pick up a guitar… it’s always about telling a story, something personal. The politics of the personal.”
For Adams, sincerity isn’t optional. “Someone told me once they tried to cover one of my songs but couldn’t get it right,” he says. “They were like, ‘What chords are you using?’ And I said, ‘You have to mean it.’ It’s like trying to play Hüsker Dü’s ‘I Apologize’ without meaning it — it’s not gonna work.”
He doesn’t expect everyone to connect with his songs. “I totally get it,” he shrugs. “If you like Rage Against the Machine or Pavement, my stuff probably sounds stupid. It’s not sarcastic, it’s not ironic. And that’s okay. I don’t think I’d even like my music if I wasn’t me.”
There’s the humor again — self-deprecating, oddly comforting. He’s the guy you’d argue with for two hours at a bar, both of you pretending not to agree as much as you do.
By the end of our talk, the rain hasn’t let up. Adams sounds tired but calm. “None of us can fix all of it,” he says. “But we can get to know each other, be empathetic, be compassionate. We’re the only species that talks to each other. We should probably use that for good.”
Listen to the full interview above and then check out this earlier interview below.
