''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 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 average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, 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 senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance writer, oc ...

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 Music ...

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 Yo ...

'', 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 string ...

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 soundtr ...

– guitar (1) * Daniel Clarke –

organ Organ may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a part of an organism Musical instruments * Organ (music), a family of keyboard musical instruments characterized by sustained tone ** Electronic organ, an electronic keyboard instrument ** Hammond ...

(1) * Jason Boesel –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks ...

(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 emplo ...

* Beatriz Artola –

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

, 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