WIRTW #804: the 'crash on the barrelhead' edition

Ryan Adams canceled his latest tour this week. His explanation? He's broke. Sick. Tired. Defeated.

Maybe all of that is true. Touring is brutal. The music business is unforgiving. And I don't take pleasure in watching someone suffer.

But I also don't have much sympathy for Ryan Adams.

For years, multiple women—including Phoebe Bridgers and Mandy Moore (his ex-wife)—have described the same basic pattern. Adams allegedly offered to mentor young female artists, pursued them romantically, and then, when those relationships soured or his advances were rejected, retaliated by undermining their careers or harassing them. Those allegations permanently altered how many view him.

What struck me wasn't just the allegations. It was how many musicians felt compelled to turn them into songs.

Phoebe Bridgers gave us "Motion Sickness".

Jason Isbell wrote "Chaos and Clothes".

Lucinda Williams unloaded with "Shadows & Doubts" and "Little Rock Star".

Old 97's? Depending on how you count, they may have written three songs inspired by Adams: "The New Kid", "Book of Poems", and "Crash on the Barrelhead".

I can't think of many musicians who've inspired an entire playlist of songs about what an awful human being they allegedly are.

That last one, "Crash on the Barrelhead", hits especially hard. Its message is unmistakable: if you keep living this way, eventually your choices catch up with you. Twenty-seven years later, these lyrics feel almost prophetic:

You're gonna crash on the barrelhead, son
You'll regret the things that you done
One of these days you're gonna rue
All the messed up things you do

The universe has a funny way of keeping score. Not always. Not quickly. But often enough.

Your reputation is the ledger.

It's one of the few things you build every single day without even realizing it. Every decision, every interaction, every kindness, every betrayal—they all become part of the story other people tell about you.

Once that story hardens, it's incredibly difficult to rewrite. Trust takes years to earn, seconds to lose, and for many people is never fully regained. Rebuilding a reputation is far harder than rebuilding a career or a tour schedule.

Eventually, enough people tell the same story about you that it stops sounding like gossip and starts sounding like your legacy.

Live your life so that you're never the subject of someone else's song about what an awful person you are.

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Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

The ADA is a two-way street

Once an employee requests an ADA accommodation, the employer has to give them exactly what they ask for… is NOT the law. In fact, it's the opposite of the law.

The ADA requires a reasonable accommodation—not the employee's preferred accommodation. Further, the ADA is a two-way street; employees have obligations, too.

One recent decision, Belval v. Electric Boat Corp., drives those points home.

A post-mortem on personal responsibility

"Sure, I posted racist memes and comments on my public Facebook page while identifying myself as a Chicago firefighter. But firing me violated my 1st Amendment rights."

That's the essence of last week's 7th Circuit opinion in Inendino v. Nance-Holt. And while the court spent most of its time parsing constitutional doctrine, I came away thinking about something much simpler.

Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

The EEOC's Nike DEI investigation shows the difference between politics and Title VII

How employers pursue diversity, equity, and inclusion matters far more than whether they pursue it.

The EEOC's recent pursuit of Nike illustrates the point. The agency says that Nike's DEI program is illegal. That's not, however, what Title VII says.

According to a New York Times investigation, EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas has spent more than two years building a case that Nike's diversity initiatives amount to unlawful discrimination against white employees. The investigation didn't begin with an employee complaint. It began with a commissioner charge, followed by an expansive probe into Nike's hiring goals, internships, mentorship programs, leadership development, executive compensation, and layoffs.

The current administration's message is clear: DEI equals discrimination. Except that's not what Title VII says.

A disability is not a license to harass

Federal disability discrimination laws exist to ensure that people with disabilities are judged on their abilities—not their diagnoses. They require reasonable accommodations. They prohibit discrimination. They level the playing field.

What they do not do is excuse misconduct.

That's the important takeaway from Brantley v. University of Texas at Austin, a recent 5th Circuit decision that rejected a student's attempt to use the Rehabilitation Act as a shield against discipline for repeatedly harassing a professor.

The facts are difficult.

After taking one of the professor's classes, the student continued emailing him. Not once or twice. According to the court, hundreds of times.

The emails ranged from academic topics to deeply personal discussions of trauma, mental health, and self-diagnosis. The professor repeatedly tried to establish boundaries. He provided information about campus mental health resources. He asked that future communications be limited to academic matters. Eventually, he pleaded with her to stop contacting him altogether, explaining that the constant emails were causing him "a tremendous amount of distress."

She kept emailing.

The university ultimately placed her on disciplinary probation.

WIRTW #803: the 'Tubthumping' edition

🎶 I get knocked down, but I get up again… 🎶

Like just about everyone else of a certain age, I know every word to Tubthumping. It's one of those songs that still somehow finds its way into bars, sporting events, wedding receptions, and random playlists nearly 30 years later.

And because of that, I always assumed Chumbawamba was exactly what it appeared to be: a one-hit wonder with one incredibly catchy song.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

The other night, after Tubthumping came on while we were driving home from dinner, I asked Siri to play more Chumbawamba.

I was completely unprepared for what came next.

Why did no one ever tell me that Chumbawamba is actually a really good band?

I expected a few more songs that sounded like Tubthumping. Instead, I got a musical identity crisis—in the best possible way.

Punk? Yes.
Techno? Yes.
New wave? Yes.
Folk? Yes.
Choral music? Somehow… yes.

Their catalog lurches from one genre to another with complete confidence, and yet it all somehow works. It's chaotic, unpredictable, and more creative than I ever would have guessed from the band that gave us one of the biggest singalong anthems of the 1990s.

Then I did what we all do after discovering something unexpected: I went to Wikipedia.

Turns out Chumbawamba spent decades as an anarchist collective, releasing fiercely political albums long before Tubthumping accidentally made them international stars. They never really seemed interested in becoming famous, and after cashing the checks from their one massive hit, they largely went back to making exactly the music they wanted to make.

Honestly, that explains a lot. Tubthumping wasn't the beginning or the end of the story. It was just the one song that happened to break through.

Sometimes the internet gets it wrong.
Sometimes radio gets it wrong.
Sometimes we get it wrong.

Sometimes a band you dismissed as a one-hit wonder has an entire catalog that's smarter, stranger, and far more interesting than the one song everyone remembers.

I think there's a workplace lesson buried in all of this. We all have a tendency to reduce people to a single data point—the one presentation, the one mistake, the one success, the one reputation. But people are almost always more complicated than that.

The best managers stay curious long after everyone else has stopped paying attention.

So, employers, stay curious. You never know what you might discover when you look beyond the one thing everyone else remembers.

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Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

DEI is not a get-out-of-summary-judgment-free card — but it can become evidence of discrimination

A white man gets fired. His employer has a DEI program. Therefore, the DEI program caused his termination.

That argument has become increasingly common in employment discrimination cases. It's also usually not enough.

But Chavers v. WestRock Services shows what happens when a plaintiff brings more than complaints about corporate diversity goals.