1989

If turning the biggest, shiniest pop record of the past year into a survey course in classic rock economy sounds like a novelty, it is. But it’s also the best kind—one that brings two divergent artists together in smart, unexpected ways, and somehow manages to reveal the best of both of them.

The finished product is decidedly free of irony or shtick, and, perhaps more important for a covers album, transforms the source material.

Though most of the tunes on 1989 are post-breakup songs, every one features a cautious sense of hope, and that doesn’t go away just because of a lower register, slower tempo, or rawer arrangement.

1989 is marvelous. Except, we knew that already. Ryan Adams unearths new emotional riches, mostly sad ones, from his source material. And his 1989 transcends mere tribute.

The knee-jerk reactors out there are probably expecting hushed versions of Swift’s own bombastic tracks, Adams simply taking out a rickety old acoustic guitar and finding the chords along the way. But this is not 1989 unplugged. It is 1989 reimagined, with often startling results.

The appeal is in the care of Adams’ arrangements, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it lyrical changes and sly winks to fans, in that undeniable connection to the source material.

At its core, the original 1989 was a defiant declaration of a young woman finding her place in the world. Given Swift's pop cultural persona and stereotypical teenybopper following, it's unfortunate that so many will dismiss Adams' cover album as a cutesy joke project.

When he plays up his strengths -- the fingerpicking and strings on “Blank Space,” or changing the “Style” lyric “James Dean daydream” to “Daydream Nation,” a nod to Sonic Youth -- the universality of great songwriting shines through.

The real star here is Swift's infallible material, evidence that the country music defector still worships Nashville's fondest saying: The song always comes first.

There's no disguising how Ryan Adams flips Taylor Swift's 1989 upside-down, turning a moment of triumph into bedsit introspection, a concept that is undoubtedly theoretically interesting, but the record works because Adams doesn't play this as a stunt.