Ryan Adams is something of a chameleon, someone who changes his personal universe up regularly. He has never shaved his head and moved into the woods or found peace in some religion cooked up by a hack sci-fi writer. Instead, the myriad of personalities he’s gone through have been more organic and incremental in nature. Though a member of alt-country act Whiskeytown and leader of the nigh-legendary Cardinals, most of Adams’ greatest transformations can be found in his impressive solo discography.
From his breakthrough 2000 debut, Heartbreaker, in all its depressing and self-deprecating glory, to the soon-to-be-released Ashes & Fire, where the wanderer has settled down with wife Mandy Moore and sobered up, a decade has seen Adams live a lot of life. Subsequent albums witnessed a number of shifts and sides of Adams’ true self, all building on his mythos while maintaining his baseline vulnerability. Gold saw the hungrier, more inventive rocker trying to reshape the world in his own image, while 2004’s Love Is Hell had the singer-songwriter opening up old wounds from Heartbreaker. Whether he was making the metal epic Orion to live out childhood dreams or abandoning everything earnest for the sake of fun in 2003’s Rock N Roll, Adams never truly brought the same personality or mood to the recording studio twice.
There’s something universal in Adams’ journey, a point in his solo career that we can all relate to, and now it’s time to see just which one. Below is a painstakingly assembled personality quiz for Ryan Adams fans and aficionados. Answer it to the best of your abilities, and be honest! From there, our Computron 5544 will analyze the data and unveil which album best fits who you are (and there are a lot of ’em). Aside from being a great distraction at work, the quiz has a deeper meaning. Cheesiness aside, artists like Ryan Adams become engrained within our culture and our psyches for the simple truth that they are us and we are them.
Ready? Now click onward into the great unknown: Take the quiz.
-Chris Coplan
News Editor
Feature artwork by Cap Blackard.
