Taylor Swift names her favorite songs from Ryan Adams' '1989' cover album

Ryan Adams released his eagerly anticipated full-album cover of Taylor Swift's 1989 on Sunday night, and the Internet promptly melted down. It wasn't just fans who were freaking out – Taylor herself is fangirling over what she calls the "reimagining" of her hit album.

The Grammy-winning singer called into Beats 1 on Monday, surprising Ryan during his interview with Zane Lowe and talked about her excitement over his album.

Taylor Swift found it hard to pick a favorite song Photo: Getty Images

"I think that the album is absolutely gorgeous," Taylor, 25, said. "My favorite thing about it is … that they’re not cover songs. They’re reimaginings of my songs, and you can tell that he was in a different place emotionally than I was. There’s this beautiful aching sadness and longing in this album that doesn’t exist in the original."

Ryan explained that the idea for the cover album dated back to last November. "I was going through a difficult time in my life," he said, "and by the time Christmas rolled around, it was the first time I was back in Los Angeles during the holidays, basically alone, on my own. I was totally bummed out." (The singer and wife Mandy Moore announced their divorce in January after almost six years of marriage.)

Ryan Adams recorded Taylor's album when he was going through a 'difficult time' Photo: Getty Images

Ryan, 40, bought a four-track cassette recorder, with plans to make a back-to-basics acoustic album like Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska so he spent a week and a half learning the songs and recorded four of them before the machine chewed up the tapes. He then re-recorded the whole album with a full band.

"That record and what she was saying, I knew at that moment, 'This is actually how I'm going to be able to say what I needed to say,' maybe as much or more than what I had to say on my own record," Ryan explained, who has already completed his next record, a double album, which he described as "the darkest deepest most romantic or loss of stuff I have ever done."

Ryan added that without Taylor's songs, "I don't think I could have got those feelings out."

Taylor, who is on tour, said that Ryan's rearrangements of her melodies "got in my head." She continued: "I would start singing his new melodies on tour, and I would have to stop myself because the crowd would be so confused [as] they haven't heard this record. Upon the first listen I knew it was a great album but those melodies reinstating themselves in my brain as replacing the originals? All right, this is a really great album."

Taylor said she couldn't pick a favorite song off Ryan's album, saying it was a tie between "Blank Space" and "How You Get the Girl."

The pair, who revealed they've written together in the past, haven't announced any future plans to work together, but Taylor said she's "open to anything collaborative." Based on the fact that she's had special guest stars join her onstage throughout her tour across the U.S. this summer, we have our fingers crossed for a live collaboration on stage very soon!

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