Ryan Adams — “New York, New York” (from Gold
Because he’s so fond of nonchalantly tossing the names of famous California highways and byways into the titles of his tunes (Hollywood Boulevard, of course, and Los Angeles’ famed thoroughfare La Cienega), Ryan Adams’ heartfelt music resonates with A much more deeply than one might reasonably predict. (The fact that much of said music is in actual fact quite compelling helps, certainly, but as his unabashed passion for all things Black Eyed Peas most painfully proves, it isn’t always a paramount consideration.) While we lay in bed the other evening, A requested that I name my favorite Adams tune, and I think I surprised him when I chose this one, Adams’ bittersweet love letter to the Big Apple. It’s a close race over the latter of the aforementioned songs, but “York’s” gloriously fun sing-alongability — not to mention its haunting videoclip, which was recorded on September 7, 2001 and is liberally littered with disquieting shots of the World Trade Center’s twin towers — make it a simple, simply irresistible triumph.
