Mandy Moore has a new album coming out this week called Silver Landings. This is a great time for her, the last few years, and now, with the success of This Is Us, she’s been able to leverage some of her accumulated capital into her music. And I don’t think there’s any pop culture observer who isn’t happy about seeing her shine. She’s come through some sh-t.
Mandy was attached to several pilots for a few years there that never went anywhere. And, of course, she was married to a f-cking asshole. Last year, in an interview with The New York Times she talked about Ryan Adams’s particular and yet derivative brand of emotional abuse. I say particular because it appeared to be his signature but also derivative because he’s not unique in his method – making people feel small so that he can feel big. She shut down her creativity, he made her feel like her imagination, her vision, her art, was always less than his. It was intentional, it was consistent, and it was cruel. There are no physical bruises, but it doesn’t mean that she’s not scarred.
Getting rid of him led to an immediate turnaround in all aspects of her life. And she’s not looking back but it doesn’t mean she’s not talking about it as part of her story – after all, she lived it. But the way she’s addressing her past with him has changed. In a new interview with The New York Times to promote the album, she talks about not talking about him as part of her recovery and as part of exposing the truth about who he is:
“I’m so done with that person having taken so much of my life and my time,” she said. “I just don’t want this thing to be about him,” she said, referring to the interview and the article that would come of it. “He’s taken so much for so long from so many people. I can promise you he gets satisfaction being talked about in any capacity. I just know that about him. I haven’t spoken to him in, I don’t know, two years or something, but just knowing him as well as I know him, he really gets off on being talked about.”
That’s exactly right. She nailed it, and she would know. Not just how to accurately describe him but do it in a way that wouldn’t actually satisfy him. Because as much as Ryan Adams is the type to get off on being talked about, he would be embarrassed to be seen as someone who wants to be talked about. He thinks he’s “punk as f-ck”, remember?
You know what would kill him even more? If her record is a smash. Not that she’s about that petty life, but I am. And I want it bad for her. Am ordering her album. To read more about Mandy and Silver Landings, she was also interviewed by Variety last week and I appreciated what she said about no longer feeling sheepish about being a “teen queen” and the music she made when she was 15. I wonder if that’s something that piece of sh-t used to mock her for. Can you see it?
