“Ryan Adams Performance in Haarlem: The Impact of #MeToo on His Music”

It’s a miracle they let him in, says Ryan Adams on Saturday evening against the sold-out Philharmonie in Haarlem. “Because I am… fucked up.”

Sighing and groaning, the American singer-songwriter struggles through his repertoire. Even though there are no less than eight table lamps on stage, he always manages to crawl into the darkest corner. From that black hole he apologizes – with one brightly lit elbow – for yet another song about his “fucking stupid feelings” and the excruciatingly slow pace of his acoustic performances. “But if I play faster, my fingers fall off. Which part of the body is actually not broken yet?” After another deep sigh: “Only my soul still works.”

Marrow and bone

It’s Adams’ standard strategy: starting out as a melancholy misanthrope and then pumping intense guitar and piano ballads to the marrow from that underdog role. The next trump card once the ice has been broken and the emotional roller coaster is running at full speed: disrupting with hilarious lyrics or absurdly comic improvisations.

This approach also works in Haarlem. If anyone can turn “fucking stupid feelings” into beautiful and boned folk rock songs, it’s Ryan Adams. In a monster set of more than two and a half hours, he manages to cram no less than 38 songs, two of which he spontaneously shakes out of the sleeve of his denim jacket.

In ‘Oh My Sweet Carolina’ and ‘Come Pick me Up’ he makes his vocal cords and harmonica howl passionately, ‘English Girls Approximately’ has an abrupt interlude in which a viewer is asked not to look so sternly “as if you were watching a documentary on National Geographic looks at a twisted songwriter”.

But yes… That’s it right.

Because since The New York Times revealed Adams’ #MeToo past in 2019, his oeuvre, and therefore this performance, has taken on a double meaning. Take an old, quasi-innocent booze-and-love ballad like ‘A Kiss Before I Go’: there he sketches exactly the tactics with which he would have taken on women: “One shot, one beer and one more kiss before I go. ”

#MeToo past

Although Adams has denied all charges and the FBI investigation has since been discontinued, a VPRO journalist told this week in the podcast ‘Blauwe M&M’s‘ how she too was assaulted by him in his Amsterdam hotel room with that excuse (“one more drink”).

That wry ambiguity permeates all the lines and reaches a bittersweet climax when a fan roars unintelligibly for a request number. “Did you yell ‘Busted’?” replies Adams. “What number is that?” Then make it up on the spot ‘You’re Busted’ (‘You’re there!’), with all the trimmings: verses, chorus and bridge („about Keanu Reeves, for no particular reason at all”). Very hilarious, for sure. But also creepy.

Cut up or not, he’s probably not the only one, concludes Adams when the hall lights come on and he can study the audience: “It’s nice to be able to judge you back.”