Why Are Women Underrepresented in Music? Look to the Ryan Adams Story

Ask a female musician if she’s experienced anything like what Phoebe Bridgers, Courtney Jaye, or Mandy Moore described, and she’s likely to have a story of her own to share.
Ryan Adams
Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images

It’s a tale that’s been told a thousand times before: A young, idealistic woman meets an older, more powerful man. He says he loves her work and promises to help her career. She’s charmed and convinced. But—surprise!—there’s a catch: He wants to sleep with her. Maybe she wants to sleep with him too, maybe she doesn’t. She might feel that she doesn’t have any other options to get ahead. Or, even worse, she’s forced against her will. Eventually, predictably, things turn ugly.

The latest (public) version of this story concerns Ryan Adams, as revealed by a New York Times exposé published earlier this week. Several women, including Adams’ ex-wife, the actress and singer Mandy Moore, the singer-songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Courtney Jaye, and, heartbreakingly, a teenage musician from Ohio identified only as Ava, all recounted similar tales: Adams would allegedly lure them in with promises of artistic advancement, only for the relationship to turn sexual and him to become controlling, manipulative, and obsessive.

“For Ava, the idea that she would be objectified or have to sleep with people to get ahead ‘just totally put me off to the whole idea’ of being a musician, she said,” reads one of the more devastating parts of the Times story. “She never played another gig.”

What might’ve happened if things had turned out differently for Ava? The Times describes her as “a gifted bassist since the age of 9,” who was “road-tripping with her family to Manhattan for gigs with established musicians” by 12. She says that she began communicating with Adams on Twitter when she was 14; over the next two years, they would text and video chat, initially about her career. Later on, he solicited photos from her and once appeared naked when she called him on Skype. (The FBI opened an inquiry into their relationship the day after the Times’ report was published.) If she hadn’t been derailed by Adams, maybe Ava would be in a band right now, making vital, inspiring music. Maybe she would be on her way to becoming the next Kim Gordon or Meshell Ndegeocello or Tina Weymouth.

Similarly, Courtney Jaye is quoted as saying of her interactions with Adams, “Something changed in me that year. It made me just not want to make music.” Mandy Moore, who was married to Adams from 2009 to 2016, described an emotionally abusive relationship in which “music was a point of control.” She abandoned her recording career because of it; she hasn’t released a full-length since the year she married Adams.

Up until a couple years ago, the Times’ investigation might not have happened. A rock star acting like a creep towards women seeking his help? Business as usual. The entire history of popular music is paved with tales of abusive and predatory men, from John Lennon and Led Zeppelin to Tupac and Dr. Dre, on and on and on. Sex with underage girls has not only been normalized, it has been celebrated. (Almost Famous and Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen” don’t exactly hold up in the #MeToo era.) This stuff is baked into the DNA of the industry. Ask any female musician if she has experienced anything like what Phoebe Bridgers, Courtney Jaye, or Mandy Moore describe, and she’s likely to have a story of her own to share.

How many lives have been ruined by coercive men and their protectors? How many women stopped working in music because of them? And how much great music did we lose in turn?

When having to put up with everything from sexual assault and physical abuse to what Bridgers once described as “emotional motion sickness,” it’s no wonder some women change paths altogether. Alice Glass has spoken about “romanticizing working at Burger King” rather than continue in her former band, Crystal Castles, alongside her alleged abuser. When breaking her silence in 2015 about her alleged rape by Kim Fowley in 1975, when she was 16, former Runaways bassist Jackie Fuchs told the Huffington Post, “I know from personal experience how all those things can eat away at you. They can take vibrant young people and turn them into something else.” She left the music industry and pursued a career in law. (When she became a four-time “Jeopardy” champion late last year, Fuchs told Pitchfork that the experience of coming forward about Fowley had helped prepare her for being in the spotlight of a game show.)

When women do press on, they are tied to the consequences forever. Lady Gaga has talked about the PTSD she still suffers, after being raped by a music producer when she was just 19. Kesha has spent the past five years fighting in court against Dr. Luke, who she claims drugged and assaulted her. Halsey read a heartbreaking poem at the 2018 New York Women’s March detailing her history with abusive men, culminating in the revelation that even her fame couldn’t protect her.

What if R. Kelly had actually mentored the young women he lured in by promising fame and fortune, from the 15-year-old he met at his old high school in 1991 to the women allegedly currently being held in his “sex cult”? What if the label employees who say they were sexually harassed by ex-Republic Records president Charlie Walk and ex-Epic Records head L.A. Reid had been left to do their jobs in peace? What would have become of R&B singer Michel’le’s career if she hadn’t been abused by Dr. Dre (her ex) and Suge Knight?

“I think sometimes about the size of a library full of the books that weren't written, the movies and shows that weren't made, the music that was never played because of the way marginalized and vulnerable creative people were treated,” Linda Holmes, host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, tweeted in the wake of the Times’ Ryan Adams report. “I mean, there's a good chance you never heard what would have been your favorite band.”

Every time another headline pops up about how women are underrepresented on the charts or in music production or missing from festival lineups, we should think about the countless gatekeepers who, instead of helping women, used their positions for sexual gain at the expense of their targets. This casual abuse of power is the norm in music, a grey area unlikely to be dealt with by a male-dominated industry still just wading into #MeToo. But the Ryan Adams account is a necessary reminder that this is what many women deal with, at one point or another, in pursuit of their dreams. The more often these difficult stories are told, the less abusers can hide behind feigned ignorance and weak, deflective apologies.