The Come Pick Me Up hitmaker has long been a fan of Swift's songwriting and he decided to give her chart-topping tracks a more stripped down feel last November (14), as a distraction of sorts from his own troubled personal life.

Discussing the unlikely new project on DJ Zane Lowe's Beats 1 radio show on Monday (21Sep15), he explained, "I've always been interested in Taylor's music. A lot of those songs are pretty flawless, they're so well written, they're so clean...

"I was going through a sort of difficult time in my life. I got back to L.A. (Los Angeles), it was around Christmas time. I was totally bummed out and I bought a four-track cassette recorder. And I was like, 'I'm going to make 1989 like Nebraska style. Bruce Springsteen Nebraska (acoustic 1982 album). Just acoustic guitar, bunch of spring reverb, just me."

Adams' efforts have already won him Swift's approval and she called in to Beats 1 during the rocker's interview to gush about his versions of 1989's songs.

She said, "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."

During the radio chat, the stars also confessed to having worked together on fresh material at Adams' PAX-AM studio, although they stopped short of revealing more about the collaboration.

Adams and singer/actress Moore filed court papers to end their six-year union in January (15).