Can Ryan Adams Be a Rock Star Again? With a New Team and Return to Concerts, Singer Looks to Move Past Sexual Misconduct Allegations
03.06.2022 - 20:37
/ variety.com
Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticWhen Ryan Adams took to the stage of Carnegie Hall in May for a sold-out show, his first public one in nearly four years, he received a standing ovation when he walked onto the stage that, by some accounts, lasted several minutes. The actual length of the ovation (and several that are said to have followed over the next three hours) is undocumented because, apparently, there were no journalists on hand.
That absence seems to have been a mutual decision: The press was not invited to cover his comeback, and journalists are wary, or weary, enough of covering Adams that it would seem none bought a ticket to do so. Nonetheless, somewhat under the radar, the seeds of some kind of return to the public realm were sewn.
Adams had a pretty good week after that, too, especially relative to how the last three years have been going for him, since a 2019 expose of the singer-songwriter’s allegedly manipulative or harassing dealings with women in his orbit made him one of the foremost emblems of #MeToo in the music world. From May 14-21, he did five east coast shows in all, with a total gross that his reps put at around $600,000.
These include the Carnegie gig, which sold 2,741 tickets with a $150,205 gross, and a second NYC show at the Beacon, where 2,261 tickets were sold and $188,424. Not bad for concerts with pretty low overhead; they all consisted of Adams alone on stage for two hours and 40 minutes a night.So… is Adams’ “cancellation” slowly getting un-canceled, while the media and his many detractors aren’t looking? And what’s the cap on a comeback when so much of the public tide outside the core fanbase has seemed irreversible?These are questions that are certainly way
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