''Prisoner'' is the sixteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter

Ryan Adams David Ryan Adams (born November 5, 1974) is an American Rock music, rock and Country music, country singer-songwriter. He has released 30 studio albums and three as a former member of Whiskeytown. In 2000, Adams left Whiskeytown and released ...

. It was released on February 17, 2017. The album is Adams' first album of original material since his 2014 album, ''

'', and was preceded by the singles "Do You Still Love Me?", "To Be Without You", and "Doomsday".

Critical reception

''Prisoner'' received generally positive reviews from music critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 79 based on 30 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Stephen Thomas Erlewine Stephen Thomas Erlewine (; born June 18, 1973) is an American music critic and former senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of multiple artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance ...

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

rated the album four out of five stars, calling it "charming", and said that "it's not a record that wallows in hurt, it's an album that functions as balm for bad times." Writing for ''

Slant Magazine ''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New Yor ...

'', Jeremy Winograd rated the album four of five stars and said that ''Prisoner'' is "one of Adams's most sonically artful albums to date."

Accolades

Commercial performance

''Prisoner'' debuted at number eight on the US ''Billboard'' 200 with 45,000

album-equivalent unit The album-equivalent unit, or album equivalent, often shortened to just unit, is a sales metric in the music industry that defines the number of streaming media, songs streamed and music download, songs downloaded equal to one Record sales, tradi ...

s, 42,000 of which were pure album sales.

Track listing

Personnel

Credits adapted from

. * Ryan Adams –

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...

, lead vocals, synthesizer, piano, harmonica, cover painting, photography, producer * Johnny T. Yerington – drums,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

, photography * Charlie Stavish – bass guitar (1, 11, 12), engineer, mixing * Mike Viola – guitar (1) * Daniel Clarke –

organ Organ and organs may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a group of tissues organized to serve a common function * Organ system, a collection of organs that function together to carry out specific functions within the body. Musical instruments ...

(1) * Jason Boesel –

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

(1) * Joe Sublett –

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to p ...

(11) ;Technical * Noah Abrams –

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

* Beatriz Artola –

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

, mixing * Reuben Cohen – mastering * Rachel Jones – assistant engineer * Phil Joy – engineer * Lee Foster – assistant engineer * Gavin Lurssen – mastering * Scott Newton – photography * Andy West – design

Critical reception

Accolades

Commercial performance

Track listing

Personnel

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Release history

References