The independent-music culture of which Adams is a longstanding figurehead prides itself on being different to rock: more sensitive feminist, even. Note, too, how many female geniuses are dismissed as divas, their art depicted as a symptom of disorder, their responses to mistreatment and calls for respect characterised as proof of an irrational nature. As I wrote for this paper in 2015: “Male misogynist acts are examined for nuance and defended as traits of ‘difficult’ artists, women and those who call them out are treated as hysterics who don’t understand art.” This was after, in response to an interview request, Sun Kil Moon’s Mark Kozelek told a crowd that I was a “bitch” who wanted to have his babies. His complexity underpins his so-called genius. His trademark sensitivity offers plausible deniability when he is accused of less-than-sensitive behaviour. Bad behaviour can be blamed on his prerequisite troubled past. The concept of male genius insulates against all manner of sin. And because he resembles most of the men who run the industry, few of them are in any hurry to act when he is accused of heinous behaviour, lest their own actions come into question. He sells records, concert tickets and magazines. The male genius is the norm from which everyone else deviates. The industry has been slower to reckon with its abusers post-#MeToo than other art forms, partly because it is built on a generally permissive culture of excess and blurred lines between work and leisure – but also because the myth of the unbridled male genius remains at its core. Surely to men, too, although if they talk about them, it’s rarely to us women. Stories like these are eminently familiar to me and many other women who work in the music industry. When the musician Phoebe Bridgers began a relationship with Adams after he offered to mentor her – at the time he was 40, she 20 – she said he quickly became emotionally abusive and manipulative, “threatening suicide” if she didn’t reply to his texts immediately. His ex-wife, the musician and actor Mandy Moore, described him as “psychologically abusive”. I wish I could say I was surprised by the New York Times report detailing allegations that the singer-songwriter Ryan Adams offered to mentor young women, before pursuing them sexually and turning nasty after they turned him down.

Music iceberg