Ryan Adams contest winner (hardest decision ever)

Eric said it best about halfway through the 80+ responses to the question, “What’s your favorite Ryan Adams lyric?” when he wrote: “You know, no matter who wins, I’m tickled by these responses, as I’m sure Heather is, too.”

Reading these responses was just fantastic for me — kinda like my favorite hypothetical situation which has not yet occured for me in real life: a bunch of us all sitting in a bar together, each taking a turn to share our favorite lyric and our reasons. Your entries made me spend the last, sheesh, two hours listening to Ryan Adams with a depth I haven’t done in far too long. Thank you for taking the time to share if you did.

Many of my favorite RA lyrics were represented in the contest entries, from Elizabeth, You Were Born To Play That Part (the whole song pretty much slays me), the line from Hard Way To Fall, “I could find her in a thunderstorm by the way that the rain would fall” that always gives me chills, the lyric from Oh My Sweet Carolina where he bitingly notes that “sunset’s just my lightbulb burning out…”

Then there was mjs who compared a line from My Winding Wheel to a favorite poem around these parts, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Jozef gave me ten sets of lyrics (including that excellent one from Halloween that always makes me smile a secret half-smile: “and the secrets that she’s keeping, they are really only dangerous to her“) and Stefan submitted a poem he wrote in NYC while listening to Ryan. There are stories of moving and missing, doubt and lust and drinking in a darkened room.

Several of you quoted the debated line that people either seem to hate or love (I love): “I would’ve held your mother’s hand on the day you was born” (from How Do You Keep Love Alive), and the perfect small Dear Chicago got a few deserved nominations (I always ache at the offhand way he tosses off the line “I been thinkin’ some of suicide…). Nathan‘s a sucker for girls who can sing and play the guitar (a common lament).

Jimmy Diggs quoted the fab unreleased Monday Night, and the best part was the way he wrote it out:

All I want is to roll through your fingers
All I need is to make it alright
All I want is to be your connection
Win your affection, be your reflection
On a Monday Ni-hi-yi-hi-yight
On a Monday Ni-hi-yi-hi-yight

If you’ve heard the song . . . that’s funny.

But this entry was the first I thought should win, and I’m gonna stick with that (impossible as this decision was!). Steve emailed this to me, and I related exactly with what he had to say and his explanation of how twisted and backwards Ryan’s head is in these lines. I’ve been there too. So congrats Steve, who wins the lithograph and a copy of Easy Tiger with this:

La Cienega Just Smiled

I hold you close in the back of my mind
And raise my glass cause either way I’m dead
Neither of you really help me to sleep anymore
One breaks my body and the other breaks my soul

From reading your blog, I get the feeling that you’re a lot like me in the sense that we’re both generally happy people. Things have gone well in my life and different forms of success have come pretty easily – what I’m trying to say is that I don’t have much to complain about. Yet when it comes to pop music, I find myself being drawn in by the slow and contemplative songs where singers are depressed and at a loss in their life – the sadder the song, the better.

I just love the image of Ryan at home in some NYC apartment at night drinking (not anymore!) a scotch while he’s thinking about his lost love and coming up with these lyrics. Like I said, I always think I want to be living this sort of life so I can be creative and write like this but I am perfectly content just living vicariously through the songs I love.

La Cienega Just Smiled – Ryan Adams
fantastic live electric version from Brixton Academy in 2001, listen at 3:37 for the best portion of the song.

And Steve’s entry is really just a longer version of what Brandon said succinctly: “women and booze. my man got it right.”
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Oh and finally, a really close runner-up was Cara (love this gal):

wow, what a bunch of romantics.
obviously the best lyrics come from “…Look who got a website“

yep.