Ryan Adams

i think x has enough fans is not necessarily true without the major label promotion. fred durst had one of the limp bizkit albums released with no promotional push from the label as an intentional act and it sold poorly.

but ... fuck this guy anyway.

When you have a free ride in the industry for as long as he did, there's probably alot of that business stuff that's out of his grasp, and when it sounds like no one wants to work with him in any capacity...

Fair warning, I refuse to click on the link to read his actual whining, but I'm surprised it's more about labels. I figured he would be more whining about not getting booked to play where he's used to playing. Seems like the kind of guy with the (still, amazingly) sizable enough audience that he'd do alright (though obviously nowhere near the days when he was getting placed in every teen drama) releasing straight through bandcamp.

I believe in redemption and forgiveness for those honestly seeking it, and I believe people can change their behaviors, particularly when bad behavior is reinforced by substance abuse, which I'm sure much of his was. I've been in recovery and I know a lot of people who are sober who remain fans of his. That said acceptance is not to be sought, it should happen organically; apologies need to be honest, and not a manipulation; and very little Adams has done leads me to believe he has performed an adequate amount of self-reflection to warrant a comeback of the type he is hoping.

He should get a dayjob and upload his little self-recorded songs to Bandcamp and YouTube on the weekends for his friends and family to pretend to listen to, like 800,000 other guitar-playing white guys his age.

He basically wants it back the way it was. A bit of selling a decent amount, a lot of media coverage, a large chunk of worship and respect. Basically, like how Bob Dylan had it, and has it now.

He'd settle for a low level of fame, respect, forward anticipation of his new/unreleased projects, etc.

What he'll end up with is a cottage industry, a small scope website, and a reasonably easy to ignore media visibility. Which is what Jonathan King was doing last time I looked (about 10 years ago)

Latest album released on his own label has about 6 million Spotify streams. At ~3000 USD per million streams that gives 18000 USD. Not a lot of instant money from streaming to cover expenses for musicians, studio time, mastering etc. But I would suppose he has some income from his older recordings, of which some original compositions have +30m streams on Spotify. And ofc there are many other streaming services, Youtube, Apple Music etc.

Major label could probably help both with playlisting to increase play count, but also licensing for ads/movies/games which I imagine is much more valuable. No idea how physical sales factor in. But I'd assume Ryan could easily make about 3000 dollars in personal profit for playing a concert, so that's probably better for fast cash. He doesn't need a label to book shows afaik.

I bet he made a ton off of licensing songs to sentimental TV/film, Chipotle and Starbucks, Old Navy and so on. I remember Starbucks putting the Cold Roses right next to every cash register when it came out. Big lifestyle change when all of that dries up, other than past residuals. Also must be hard to know he will likely never set foot onstage again at the Ryman and so on.

whole lotta folks lining up to be ryan adams' business manager itt

haha, he's begging for it!

he doesn't need a better business manager, he needs a better sponsor

And then he can go on Opportunity Knocks!

He's got options.

https://www.printwand.com/blog/media/2012/01/tear-off-sheets-300x296.jpg

The whiner whines

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ryan-adams-wants-forgiveness-after-mandy-moore-and-phoebe-bridgers-emotional-abuse-accusations/

The 46-year-old has spent his forced isolation binging Bravo reality television, ordering copious amounts of Thai food, and plucking away at his guitar and writing somber lyrics, such as “I close my eyes and beg forgiveness before I sleep.”

I look forward to never hearing these:

But it’s hard to say exactly what Adams has learned, as he doesn’t get into specifics of what these past two years have taught him about his alleged controlling and emotionally abusive behavior. He hints that he’s saving these revelations for his music, with remorseful lyrics and song titles that question why he’s even doing all of this.

“​​I use what I’ve got and I work with it, and I try to make something beautiful out of it,” he said. “And then it changes me.”

“I’ve learned that Thai food is fantastic - but expensive if you eat it all the time”

Adams then asked the reporter if he knew of any Thai restaurants in the area that would allow him to perform an acoustic set of all new material

“Maybe we could interest Bravo in a reality show about this, like, a comeback tour of Thai joints”

He admitted that he was mostly taken aback by Moore’s participation in the story, where she alleged that over the course of their nearly six-year marriage, Adams was psychologically and emotionally abusive and had stalled her music career. “I was like, what is the point of this now? Because this is going to hurt my family and it’s going to hurt our friends,” Adams said. “And we talked about this stuff years ago.”

i mean we all know he learned nothing but he really learned nothing

His hero is Morrissey, so...

hey we talked about this already i thought we were good!

Drunken noodle

Reading the longer profile linked in that article makes me realize how near-impossible it is to read a portrait of someone in L.A. without it sounding PR hokum. (See also last year's New Yorker profile of Beck driving around.)

As in

One afternoon, he wandered into the Vedanta Temple in Hollywood, a gleaming miniature Taj Mahal built in 1938. Inside, Adams heard beautiful singing and saw flowers and other offerings to the Hindu deities. Then the singing stopped as worshippers began to meditate. In that moment, Adams says, he felt something beyond his initial curiosity. It was like, he says, “waking up inside my body.” Adams began returning to the temple nightly.

Lol

o_O

what do you do about a problem like ryan adams

xxp Don't think that's unique to L.A. I've seen plenty of NYC-focused profiles like that.

One thing that really rubs me the wrong way in that article is how handwavy the writer is in dismissing Adams' accusers. For instance, musing that because she was successful in the past, Mandy Moore should have had no problems relaunching her singing career, or implying that Phoebe Bridgers built her career on writing songs about her relationship with Adams.

It’s not really the music he misses, it’s the power trip.

Also he didn't abuse some of his female employees!

Also must be hard to know he will likely never set foot onstage again at the Ryman and so on.

do you think he thought of himself as The Ry-man?

It’s not really the music he misses, it’s the power trip.

I was into different music when this guy got popular, so I have only heard most of his music by Adams second hand - but from the start from someone that played a couple shows with Whiskeytown way back in the mid-90s I heard this dude was a serious dick. And pretty much any story from when that band broke up onward, pretty much any story had him being enfant terrible as an undercurrent. I just never gave his music any real chance and this was years and years before all this other stuff broke out...

I'd just moved to North Carolina (pretty much for the twang music scene) as he was beginning his ascent, and he'd already stepped on so many people in the scene I didn't have much interest in hearing him. I've had friends from other regions who were really struck by his songs. To the extent his art has bled into my life, it's struck me as about the level of solo Paul Westerberg.

It's only post #metoo that I'm starting to see that there's many successful people may feel some passion for songwriting/corporate management/owning a shop/directing prestige TV, but that's secondary to the high of controlling people.

I'm not going to lie, I was a huge fan of Whiskeytown and his first couple of solo records. But yeah, I remember lots of rumors about him being a complete asshole and essentially that being why they split up.

Good post, bendy.
it's struck me as about the level of solo Paul Westerberg.
Particularly sick burn.

David Berman said back in 2001 "I don’t expect to be insulted by being told Ryan Adams in the best songwriter in America. Maybe mid-period Steve Forbert B-sides sound fresh to some ears. It's just self-pity in rock."

Which sounds like a sick burn just from the sound of the word Forbert, but then you hear Forbert's "Romeo's Tune" and (for better and worse) it's completely Adams's predecessor.

it's struck me as about the level of solo Paul Westerberg.

in what universe is this a burn?

Ryan Adams was never a tenth the songwriter Westerberg is / was

He said "solo Paul Westerberg."

Dude is doing Instagram ads now, guess he’s taking promotion into his own hands:

https://i.imgur.com/lLZBVav_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

it bums me out that this guy i used to like sucks but it bums me out more he got away with it for so long

I thought the FBI was investigating him - what happened with that?

https://www.nme.com/news/music/ryan-adams-cleared-by-fbi-in-investigation-into-underage-sexts-2856567

https://variety.com/2022/music/news/ryan-adams-new-team-concerts-move-past-allegations-1235284292/

Interview w/new managers.

There will always be an audience for him, people for whom Wilco is just too spicy.

fuck variety for entertaining that bullshit.

Weirdly enough, I was listening to some music on random shuffle the other day, and I was given not one but two or three songs that turned out to be by Ryan Adams (or Whiskeytown). I'd never really listened to more than a couple of albums of his, and the couple of shows I'd seen were shitshows, but these songs were all pretty good. And he's a shithead.

Kind of interesting to see their strategy, as hideous as it is:

Cancel culture freezes bad behavior. It doesn’t give people a chance to apologize. Everything we like about our legal system is the presumption of innocence, the right to confront your accuser, the statute of limitations; none of that kind of stuff exists in cancel culture.

Personally, I see ‘call-out culture’ as better, far better than cancel culture. I understand that you can call attention to someone’s wrongdoing, and then, with the right people, they can have a chance to learn and correct the issue and become a better person. You can’t turn the clock back. We can’t change what’s happened. But I feel that everybody deserves a second chance, and as long as they follow the right path, then they should be allowed to certainly pursue that.

Here's the path he is actually on:

Since he participated in the Los Angeles magazine profile last year, Adams has avoided directly referring to the events that seemingly brought him down. But he may have said a lot just in a response he offered to Johnny Depp’s victory-lap post on Instagram, following a court verdict that went mostly in his favor. Adams added a comment under Depp’s post that consisted of a congratulatory heart and fire symbol.