20:20 was a planned box set release by singer-songwriter Ryan Adams, rumored to have a scheduled release in late 2007.[1] Adams stated that the box set would include albums that he "really wanted to be records".[2]
Background
According to Adams, the box set was to include five unreleased albums: The Suicide Handbook, 48 Hours, Pink Hearts, Darkbreaker and Black Hole.[1] Adams stated that the five albums would be: "collected into a box-set called 20:20. There'll also be a couple of disks, one of rare stuff that nobody has heard and one of b-sides from all the singles that we made. It will be interesting to get all that stuff in one place."[1]
Cardinals member and frequent collaborator, James Candiloro, was said to be compiling the box set,[2] while author Stephen King wrote the liner notes.[3]
Ryan has stated that The Suicide Handbook was made for Lost Highway as the follow-up to Heartbreaker and called it his "most majestic piece ever".[1]48 Hours was recorded after Gold in forty-eight hours, hence the title, and is in the country rock genre.[5]Pink Hearts, or The Pink Hearts Sessions, is named for his "Nashville Punk" band The Pink Hearts with whom he toured Gold.[6]Darkbreaker was made in L.A. after Jacksonville City Nights (2005) and is, according to Adams, the sound of him "falling apart".[1] The album contains songs that were recorded for the Cameron Crowe movie Elizabethtown but not used.[5] The final album to be included was Black Hole which Adams called "a real serious effort to make a rock record" and confirms that it was the last album he recorded "in the last days of the drugs".[1] Adams told the NME in 2014 that the album was a "really cool" composite of two recorded versions of the album and was considering releasing it for Record Store Day 2015.[7] In the end Adams did not follow this plan through, re-releasing "Come Pick Me Up" instead.[8]
