Just when you thought you've had your fair share of Ryan Adams over the past month, the singer's dreamy cover of Foreigner's 1984 ballad "I Want to Know What Love Is" surfaces. And it's good.
Adams popped in to NPR's World Cafe recently to promote his new self-titled album when the singer decided to show off his cover skills, which aren't too shabby considering he's tried his hand at the likes of Iron Maiden and Danzig, Rolling Stone notes. For his Foreigner arrangement, Adams strips away the '80s power ballad cheese and gives a performance that's hauntingly vulnerable. Listen to the gem below.
The singer released his 14th studio effort last month, and there's been no shortage of Ryan Adams news since. After the album dropped, Adams joined Hüsker Dü's Bob Mould on stage in New York, where a day later he wowed David Letterman on The Late Show with his lead single "Gimme Something Good" (Letterman asked for an encore and Adams obliged). A few days later, Adams released the four-song EP Jacksonville before announcing that he will be releasing the highly anticipated lost album Blackhole in 2015.
"There's two versions of that record," he told NME about the material from 2007, which he wrote while still battling substance abuse. "There's one where the vocals and the performances are really f----- up. Then there's a second version, which was the last thing I did when I was still messed up. Bits and pieces of that had to be stitched together to make the final product like a patchwork quilt, because some of its vocal takes are too f----- up to release. But it's really cool and the end result made me very happy."
The singer is on tour through November.
