Hipster king of tongue-in-cheek narcissistic swagger Father John Misty has turned his condescending gaze—plus considerable talent and wry humor—on Ryan Adams’ much publicized/maybe cloying/sloppily salivated over cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989, which released today. Sure, everyone is gonna love the record, and naturally Swift has been making a faux-surprise/delight face since it was announced…
…gushing uncontrollably, because of course she has. Adams’ homage brings a level of credibility to the country-now-pop singer’s latest body of work that all the fireworks and #SquadGoals achieved never will. But at the core of it, the whole thing smells a little too sweet, like meat that’s been left in the summer sun, and hats off to J. Tillman—or FJM—for having the space, and ten minutes to spare with an iPhone and guitar, to make sure we all realized just how precious the whole thing is. Here’s Father John Misty’s Blank Space, done in the vein of the Velvet Underground, an on-the-nose response to Adams’ claim his was “in the style of The Smiths and Bruce Springsteen.”
The only scary question is, what's next? How meta can this get before we all die of cuteness?