Robert and Ryan

It seems appropriate that, in a year where women dominated the Grammys, male pop musicians who have been subjected to greater scrutiny in the wake of the Me Too Movement have seen their time up.

After years of accusations, Chicago hip-hop/R&B pioneer R. Kelly (above) has been charged with ten counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse over a twelve-year period, from 1998 to 2010, and three of them were minors at the time.  Kelly didn't do himself any favors when he went on CBS to do an interview conducted by Gayle King.  If dressing for the occasion in a suit and a tie was an effort to be taken seriously, he didn't help his case when he got up and flew off the handle with a series of incoherent ramblings that sounded like he was saying anything just to dominate the conversation.  King had to act like a den mother, calling him by his full first name - Robert - and trying to get him to calm down. 

Meanwhile, in the indie-rock world, North Carolina rocker Ryan Adams (above) was looking forward to heading into a very ambitious period in 2019; he'd planned to go on tour, and he was about to release three albums this year, something neither the Beatles nor Elton John had done in their respective primes.  Then the New York Times reported that Adams had offered to help several women advance their musical careers and then made advances of a more sexual nature toward them - including his ex-wife, "This Is Us" actress Mandy Moore, who divorced him in 2016 - and then tried to sabotage and harass them when they didn't reciprocate.  Oh yeah, and Adams is also alleged to have sent sexually explicit text messages to an underage girl.when she was underage. This led to the FBI to announce an investigation to see if Adams - who has denied the charges, of course - committed a crime by sending such texts.  Adams' LP releases have been canceled, and his tour of the British Isles, set to start at the end of the month, has also been scrubbed.  

Both Kelly and Adams are grizzled veterans, Adams being the younger of the two, and if both end up falling, it will have different implications for their respective music scenes.   Hip-hop/R&B is thriving so much, with little chance of that wave cresting, that it can survive losing Kelly.  But rock and roll is in such a weak, precarious state - its weakest state in thirty years - that losing Adams at a time when there are so few rockers under 50 of his caliber would be a literal death blow for an already moribund musical form.  But even so - and even if Kelly's forced exit from the pop scene does have a large impact on hip-hop/R&B - both men ought to pay for whatever crimes and indiscretions they committed or might have committed, because no one wants to go back to a time where we would tolerate such behavior, like when Keith Richards would slap Anita Pallenberg around or when Ike Turner beat Tina (and I won't even bring up Jerry Lee Lewis).  So Kelly will never have the chance to concoct a song as good or as influential as "I Can Believe I Can Fly."  So Adams won't be able to make a grand artistic statement by releasing the equivalent of a triple album this year.  Too bad.  We have to have standards here.

And oh yes, to respond to the inevitable complaint that racism is the reason that the media are so focused on Kelly when they're not paying so much attention to Adams, that's only because Adams isn't a household name - he's an indie rocker, for Pete's sake!  Besides, some people might confuse him with this guy!

Bryan Adams, who, like Ryan Adams, celebrates his birthday on November 5 (my birthday!), is actually a nice, down-to-earth guy.  He's known for taking public transportation to his own concerts.