Ryan Adams Unleashes "Hell"

Ryan Adams' Love Is Hell will finally surface this fall as a pair of EPs. The first part, Love Is Hell Vol. 1, is due November 4th, the same day as Rock n Roll, Adams' new full-length. The second installment of Love will come out December 9th.

The EPs will contain between six and eight songs each, and they resolve a dispute between Adams and his label, Lost Highway. Earlier this year, Adams said the label had rejected Love Is Hell, which he wanted to come out in March. "'They' don't know what to do with it," he wrote at the time. "I've heard adjectives like 'incredibly too depressing' and -- this one's funny -- 'dark.' Also 'not your best stuff.' They just think it's too alternative rock or something."

Adams is a famously prolific songwriter, but Rock n Roll will be his first studio album of new material since 2001's Gold (he released the odds and ends demo collection Demolition last year). Two more unreleased albums from the backlog he's built up in the last two years, 48 Hours and The Suicide Handbook, are due to surface on an upcoming box set.

Adams is planning a tour for the end of the year.

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Song Stories

“Tonight's the Night”

The Shirelles | 1960

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."

More Song Stories entries »

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