About Today

Ryan Adams, Come Pick Me Up (demo)

crumbler: A great find from Patrick Cooper, by way of This Morning I Am Born Again. This demo version of the Heartbreaker classic has a shaggy, half-baked quality that puts the emphasis on those bitter, scorched-earth lyrics. The absence of backup singer Kim Ritchey makes all the difference — Coop has it exactly right: “The song meant one thing when a second voice joined the chorus. The song meant another when no one did.” (download)

I’ve never heard this version before, but it reminds me of a live version I have where Adams says at the beginning, “I just wrote this today.” Not sure how true that is, but I’ll have to dig around on my old hard drive and find it and post it here.