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UPDATE 1:30 PM EDT 09/22/2015: It appears that Tillman has removed both tracks from SoundCloud. Here is his statement on why he removed them.
Ryan Adams' full-album tribute to Taylor Swift's 1989 is out digitally today, and the two artists went on Zane Lowe's Beats 1 show to talk about the project, their past collaboration history, and Adams' forthcoming double-album. But one person hasn’t taken the long view of the project, and that's former Fleet Foxes drummer Joshua Tillman, better known as Father John Misty (whose excellent second album I Love You, Honeybear came out in February). To share his feelings about the project, he took to Twitter with the news that he'd covered Adams' versions of Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" and "Welcome To New York," complete with album art peeled from The Velvet Underground's debut album. And they're not exactly laudatory gestures.
Tillman’s versions are basically Lou Reed homages (the melody on "Blank Space" is a riff on The Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting For The Man"). And there's a little dash of Bob Dylan in there, which is a stylistic burden Adams has been carrying from decades of reviews citing his prolific output. Well, the joke’s on you, Mr. Tillman, because the more Taylor Swift covers—even ones specifically recorded to needle other folkish rock artists—the better. You know what they say, “the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate,” and it's likely Swift and Adams will just shake this off—if they even listen at all.
