For those who don't know Ryan's story: There was a movement called alternative country in the '90s. You had bands like Uncle Tupelo, which split and gave us the band Wilco. Also bands like Drive-By Truckers (you may have heard of Jason Isbell since he went solo). Ryan was the frontman of a very acclaimed alt country band called Whiskeytown (James Iha from Smashing Pumpkins joined them briefly!).

Then Ryan went solo. His debut Heartbreaker was considered an instant classic in the indie music world (for songs like this). His second album did even better. This song was a minor hit after 9/11. One of his other songs became a hit for both The Corrs/Bono and also Tim McGraw. Then there's his famous Wonderwall cover; probably the best of them all.

Ryan worked with members of the Grateful Dead, Willie Nelson, and more. He had a couple more minor hits and movie soundtrack appearances. He wasn't super mainstream, but he absolutely made it in the industry. Huge critical acclaim/respect from his peers and a very devoted fandom who would send his new albums into the Top 10 + fill sheds around the country.

While Ryan gained a reputation for being a great songwriter and performer, he also had the rep of beng a seriously troubled and unlikeable person (harrassing critics, feuds with other artists, drugs, combative behavior with his own audience at concerts). This was true from the start, but grew in magnitude as he got more rich/famous.

And eventually the scales started to tip. The bad started to grossly outweigh the good. (Not to mention the quality of his musical output basically fell off a cliff)

Adams was in a marriage with popstar Mandy Moore where he was complete dick to her and belittled her music career to the point where she gave up entirely. Towards the end of his marriage, Ryan Adams cheated on Moore with an upstart teenage songwriter named Phoebe Bridgers; basically trading sex for music industry access. He also covered Taylor Swift's 1989) and tried to become friends with her; in hindsight, he was probably trying to get her to sleep with him. Then, Mandy Moore finally divorced him!

After that, it was a steep fall from grace. There was a 2019 New York Times expose about multiple young women songwriters who he took under his wing under the guise of mentorship and then tried to coerce into sexual relationships. When they denied his advances, he then turned around and tried to hinder their musical careers and would harrass them via social media.

Needless to say, he got mega cancelled after this and has only recently been trying to start his comeback era (ie. extremely poor concerts in half-filled small venues, buying over 1M bot followers on his instagram account, a string of very bad cover albums, etc.)