Ryan Adams: ‘I Only Like Country Music as an Irony’

Ryan Adams has been trying for years to make it clear that he is not a fan of country music, but he's taken his comments on the genre to a new level.

In a recent interview with Buzzfeed, Adams renewed his stance that he doesn't like country and doesn't want to be thought of as a country musician.

“There’s this wrong idea about me being identified with things that are Southern or country,” he says. “I do not f--king like country music, and I don’t own any of it. I watched 'Hee Haw' as a kid with my grandmother, I only like country music as an irony. I liked it when I would get drunk.”

But there's no question that Adams' music has many qualities of the country genre, and he is often referred to as an alt-country musician, especially during his time with his band Whiskeytown.

“I suppose playing country music felt like learning how to build a beautiful bookshelf or something,” he says. “There was a certain amount of honesty that had to be there, and it had to hurt. I loved the discipline of that. It reminded me of the challenge of playing punk rock. But me playing country music ... it was a false face. It was style appropriation.”

This isn't the first time that Adams has dissed the genre. In 2008, he posted a blog saying, “I hate HATE country music. I always have. I ‘reference’ it when I make music that sounds like that, the way a director would use water as a backdrop for a scene with a shark in it. But I cannot stand country music one bit.”

He has also had beef with Nashville's famed Ryman Auditorium, calling it a "a s--thole in Nashville" after a show there in 2008.