Ryan Adams’ incredible sophomore solo effort Gold turned fifteen years old over the weekend, following up one of the strongest solo debuts in recent memory in 2000’s Heartbreaker. There are a lot of things could be written about that album, most notably that it contains some of Adams’ finest songwriting contributions and marked a bit of a stylistic departure from Heartbreaker, but he summed it all up with a stirring Instagram post. 

“I wanted to explore hope again,” Adams wrote about the preliminary sessions for the album as he recounts feeling drained after extensively touring around his debut. “I’m so grateful I stayed who I was and made this leap when all anyone wanted was Heartbreaker part two. You gotta be who you really are–not something people can sell.”

He also added later on, “For all those heartbreaking times, confusion, alcoholism, struggle with the label, I got up and made this. This and so so so many more songs that aren’t even on this. And I’m so proud I did.”

Read the full post below. 

GOLD… 15 Years Ago today. Happy Anniversary to this awesome chapter in my life. ….the title refers to the color of the buildings and hills at dusk in LA. I was living in the Roosevelt Hotel when I recorded this. I had so many cool songs, ideas, so many memories that had become technicolor from how black and white they had been only a year before. I knew I wanted to capture that after having toured the world by myself, solo show after solo show. I had one harmonica and it was rusted and knicked- I threw it in the LA River. I wanted to explore hope again. I wanted to write songs about what it felt like to be kissed again. To feel like hot fireworks in a roof in a paper bag. I wanted to live. I’m so grateful I stayed who I was and made this leap when all anyone wanted was Heartbreaker part 2. You gotta be who you really are- not something people can sell. I never have had that problem. It labeled me difficult but it also meant I wouldn’t have to pretend I didn’t have something to say. I did. If you don’t, put down the guitar and go work at Old Navy. Let the people who do get by. They’ll be staring back at you in the dust anyway. Truth has a way of doing that. For all those heartbreaking times, confusion, alcoholism, struggle with the label, I got up and made this. This and so so so many more songs that aren’t even on this. And I’m so proud I did. I even wrote a love song about scientifically wishing redshift wasn’t a cosmological reality- and that the universe was coming together not drifting apart. Now I know it doesn’t matter where other galaxies and stars are going- just that people remember we are the same distant traveler to each other, bluer and bluer each year, and to shine just as bright. We are all out here drifting on the sea of nothing with our flashlights and lighters waving.

Let that light shine.

Here’s to that.

Happy 15th, GOLD.

And to that kid that made this, that wild ass, determined, stubborn kid, if I could reach back in time far enough I would give him the biggest hug he ever had. He wouldn’t know how bad he was gonna need that.

DRA