Photo by David Brendan Hall
Remember when Josh Tillman, aka Father John Misty, did Ryan Adams’ 1989 Taylor Swift covers in the style of The Velvet Underground? Then, took them down because he said Lou Reed told him to in a dream? Well, according to a new interview, the whole situation was mostly one epic bit of trolling.
Speaking to Louisville’s 91.9 radio station, Tillman explained that he decided to take on “Blank Space” and “Welcome to New York” after noticing his tour manager was listening to Adams’ 1989 cover album. He knocked out both his covers in about 60 minutes — a pretty impressive feat for their quality and style, especially considering he claims to never have really listened closely to Swift’s originals.
Shocked by the amount of rampant press his covers were receiving (including our own, here), he went ahead and decided to take them down. Naturally, this led to even more public attention — including from Swift’s camp, who reportedly reached out and tried to convince Tillman to put them back up online.
This is the point in which Tillman went into full troll mode, issuing a lengthy, detailed statement explaining the reason for pulling his 1989 renditions. “Delete those tracks, don’t summon the dead, I am not your plaything,” he claimed Reed had said to him in a dream at the time.
“I was annoyed at the media,” he told 91.9 (via Pitchfork). “I was like, ‘these people will print anything’, so I went and gave them the most fraudulent, the most blatantly absurd, unprintable piece of surrealistic nonsense – and they printed it!”
Below, listen to the full interview; Tillman also discussed his latest music video for “The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apartment” and his new song “The Memo”.
Watch the Rock It Out! Blog panel discusses Adams and Tillman’s Taylor Swift covers:
