When do you give up on your favourite artist?

It’s the music fan’s dilemma — what do you do with your favourite songs when disturbing behaviour about the artist who created them emerges, asks Cameron Adams.

Ryan Adams performs in Austin, Texas in 2016. Picture: Christopher Polk/Getty

When do you give up on your favourite band or artist?

Last week musician Ryan Adams went from hipster to dumpster immediately when a New York Times story quoted a series of women (including his ex wife Mandy Moore) who cited everything from sexual and emotional abuse, manipulative and abusive behaviour to claims of explicit conversations with an under age girl online.

A string of Adams’ contemporaries have spoken out against him and the complete lack of anyone supporting him has been marked. Even R Kelly has people in his camp sticking up for him.

The claims against him are fresh, with the FBI investigating Ryan’s alleged communications with an underage fan.

Adams strongly denies any wrongdoing in relation to that matter and he has apologised on Twitter and “resolved to work to be the best man I can be.”

American radio has pulled his latest song. A new Adams album, due in April, seems unlikely to surface. But people are still streaming his songs and watching his videos, with some even discovering them thanks to the allegations. His most popular song, Come Pick Me Up, has a recent YouTube comment thread that reads “sexual misconduct claims brought me here. This song’s pretty good.”

RELATED: Ryan Adams accused of emotional abuse and sexual misconduct

Ryan Adams has been accused of emotional abuse and sexual misconduct, claims he denies. Picture: Dan Hallman/Invision/AP

Ryan Adams fans now find themselves in a quandary. Do the allegations about his behaviour negate his songs? You could argue for an artist who put so much of himself into his lyrics, separating his behaviour from his songs is going to be incredibly difficult.

Adams’ most recent song F--- the Rain, was released in late January and was played by Double J, which is the station artists deemed too old for Triple J are farmed off to.

But the station hasn’t played Adams in the past week.

Triple J have also stopped playing another currently problematic artist, Sticky Fingers.

Sticky Fingers are the most controversial and divisive band in Australia right now.

They describe themselves as “if the Clash, Pink Floyd and Arctic Monkeys are three beads of sweat that meet rolling down your back, Sticky Fingers are there licking it up.”

This week they sold 2954 copies of their latest album to debut at No.4 on the ARIA chart and bump Queen and the Greatest Showman out of the Top 5 for the first time in months.

They’ve done it without the support of Triple J, who used to champion the band — they were once a feature of the Hottest 100, but none of the three songs they released last year polled in the Top 200, let alone Top 100 this year.

RELATED: Sticky Fingers accused of ‘disgusting’ behaviour at country gig

Sticky Fingers have become Australia’s most polarising band.

Back in 2016 the band’s front man Dylan Frost faced allegations of racism and violence which saw them attacked online and forced them to put themselves on hiatus to deal with “internal issues”, citing alcohol addiction and mental health issues.

Last year Frost finally aired his side of the story on Triple J, denying “hurling racial abuse” at a gig in Sydney.

He and the band have been involved in ongoing wars — online and in person — with indigenous Australians. Frost was accused of being physically threatening to indigenous singer Thelma Plum after an incident at a Sydney pub.

In December 2016 after the incident with Frost, his girlfriend and another friend the singer stated “I’m sorry that she felt threatened by my behaviour. I’m ashamed I made a woman feel unsafe around me and I never want to put myself or anyone else in that position again. Violence against women is not ok and it never will be. We absolutely feel for and support women who have been affected by abuse and we should have talked about this sooner.”

Triple J confirmed they have no new Sticky Fingers songs on their playlist currently.

There’s now an online petition to ‘Get Sticky Fingers back on Triple J’ that currently has a 849 supporters.

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US singer Mandy Moore added her voice to the chorus of condemnation of her ex-husband, Ryan Adams. Picture: Diane Bondareff/AP

The band have been strategic about announcing live shows — operating almost off the mainstream media grid. They don’t do interviews (beside a long piece with The Australian last year that confused many) and can sell out tours just by directly targeting their fanbase through mailing lists or social media.

When the band posted news of their album release last week, their fans on Facebook got to chat among themselves and, being social media, it didn’t always go so well.

A few people tagged Triple J in the hope that might get them to play the album. It hasn’t worked so far.

And from Connor Ongheen came this delightful review of the new album “Rehab was the worst thing that could have happened”. Only one solitary Sticky Fingers fan replied “why be so mean?”

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Maybe there could be a Problematic Festival, for people who just want to hear the music and don’t care about what the people making it have or haven’t done.

There’s plenty of potential headliners — more and more every month — R Kelly, Ryan Adams, Sticky Fingers, Gene Simmons, Ted Nugent, Bill Wyman, Chris Brown and Dr Dre just for starters.

They just might struggle finding a radio station to promote it, but maybe they could use that venue the Fyre Festival hired? That went well.

Cameron Adams is a News Corp national music writer.

@cameron_adams