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

Ryan Adams David Ryan Adams (born November 5, 1974) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, artist, and poet. He has released 23 albums, as well as three studio albums as a former member of alt-country band Whiskeytown. In 2000, Adams lef ...

. 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 a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, 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 of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

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'', 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, is a measurement unit in music industry to define the consumption of music that equals the purchase of one album copy. This consumption includes streaming and song downloads in addition to traditio ...

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

Track listing

Personnel

Credits adapted from

. * Ryan Adams –

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

bass guitar The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...

, 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 beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

, photography * Charlie Stavish – bass guitar (1, 11, 12), engineer, mixing *

Mike Viola Michael A. Viola is an American producer, musician, songwriter, and singer, best known for his work with Panic! at The Disco, Andrew Bird, Ryan Adams, J.S. Ondara, Mandy Moore, and Jenny Lewis. His original music has been featured on soundtrac ...

– guitar (1) * Daniel Clarke – organ (1) *

Jason Boesel Jason Lyon Boesel (born 1977/1978) is an American musician, songwriter and producer based in Los Angeles. He was the drummer for Rilo Kiley and has also played with The Elected and Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band. Bands He also drummed ...

– drums (1) * Joe Sublett –

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

(11) ;Technical * Noah Abrams –

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable 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 employed ...

* Beatriz Artola –

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

, mixing * Reuben Cohen – mastering * Rachel Jones – assistant engineer * Phil Joy – engineer * Lee Foster – assistant engineer *

Gavin Lurssen Gavin Lurssen is an American mastering engineer. He owns Lurssen Mastering in Hollywood, California.2017 albums Ryan Adams albums PAX AM albums