Adams tells USA Today the reason his did the cover album, "I had been listening to 1989 off and on, and I could hear what I thought was a sort of pain in there. Maybe I only just saw it that way, but I could hear the lyrics, and I thought, 'There's something in there, and I want to know how far it goes.'"

He also revealed that he collaborated with Swift while she was working on her 2012 album "Red" on a song that has never been released. He recalls, "She basically already had this thing done. I just sat down and went, 'What about this?' And 'What about this?' We worked on a bridge, and we finished it. I guess I was the guy who could call people that would come in around 11 or 12 to jam."
That experience left an impression on Adams, "There's that special, very interesting ingredient where you hear a skeleton of the song, just the bones, and her voice, and you go, 'Well, of course, this person plays to 60,000 people.'"