“Maybe I had something nobody saw, blame it on the wall”
Ryan Adams is fantastic songwriter and musician, maybe he is one of the very few geniuses in the art form. Many reviewers are complaining about his vast output, I’m not, I think his body of work is remarkably high in quality. What is even more remarkable is that much of his songwriting is unavailable to the public. His output could have been double of what his discography tells us. A lot of his recorded material is of equally high quality, and in some cases even higher, than his official albums/songs.
I have more than 2000 Ryan Adams related songs on my hard disk, many of them are unreleased songs in studio quality, it was quite a task to pick one to present to you…
In 2001, Ryan Adams made one of the best albums of his career, and never released it. It’s one of my favorite albums and it has never seen the light of day. The name of the album is 48 Hours. It was recorded during a, yes you guessed it, 48 hour intense session. 48 Hours is the stuff og legends. It was recorded shortly after Gold, and it was helmed by multi-instrumentalist Ethan Johns who produced Adams’ Heartbreaker. For reasons unknown, 48 Hours was shelved in favor of Demolition (which does include a few tracks from the session). I love Demolition but 48 Hours is another league.
There are so many good songs on the album, there are at least 5 masterpieces and no fillers. I should’ve done a post on the whole record, but…
I’ve chosen a country song from 48 Hours as my fifth in the Unreleased series, the song is called Walls:
Great pedal-steel work by Greg Leitz!
I see Walls as a song about looking back at your life, discovering that you maybe should have been more open, it’s about “the walls” between people.
Walls, lyrics:
These are the walls
Walls are emptiness made
Yeah, and this is the storm
Looks like it’s gonna hold
Yeah, nobody knows
Who they are around here anymore
Cigarettes and some beers
Then it’s back in the car to the store
Ain’t it funny how we forgot who we were through the years
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Maybe I had something nobody saw
Blame it on the walls
Well the rain’s gonna come
Come and wash away all of our sins
And if the damn doesn’t break
Going to wash it away with some gin
Cause they got money to make
And I’ve always got a reason to go
Sheets don’t move from the bed
My head doesn’t move from the floor
Ain’t it funny how we forgot who we were through the years
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Maybe I had something nobody saw
Blame it on the walls
Ain’t it funny how we forgot who we were through the years
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Put your fist through the wall cryin’ television tears
Yeah . . . yeah . . . yeah
Oh . . . oh
– Hallgeir
Sources: My own memory and knowledge