Role Ending Misdemeanor / Music

There is a two-week waiting period (after the termination of a role) before an example can be added. This ensures the job loss is accurately reported, actually sticks, and avoids knee-jerk reactions.

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In General

• The Western music industry was hit with the "Weinstein effect", with numerous musicians' careers being destroyed as a result of sexual misconduct allegations:
  • The sexual misconduct accusations against Brand New frontman Jesse Lacey in late 2017 greatly tarnished the band's reputation and legacy in the alternative rock and emo world. The band had just released their acclaimed fifth album Science Fiction, which ultimately wound up making almost no critics' best-of lists at the end of the year, as a result of no one wanting to touch the record after the scandal. After Lacey admitted the accusations were true, the band's opening acts on their world tour both dropped out, and the entire tour was canceled. While Brand New's reputation in regards to their impact with Deja Entendu and The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me are still held high, Jesse's actions have made it difficult for people to talk about the band's music without someone mentioning the controversy.
  • One particularly extreme series of cases led to the downfall of an entire record label: Burger Records was a cult indie label and record store from Orange County, California that specialized in Garage Rock and Power Pop music, and was famous for releasing most of their catalog on cassette tapes rather than vinyl records or CDs, leading to a revival of cassette tapes in the indie music scene. They had a webseries about the employees at their record store and multiple festivals and tours dedicated to their line up, and by 2018 were one of America's fastest growing indie labels. But in July 2020, multiple women (including Clementine Creevy, lead singer of Burger band Cherry Glazerr) came forward saying that the label's higher-ups had normalizing a culture of sexual abuse among their artists, and accused several members of Burger's bands of sexual assault, domestic abuse, and statutory rape. ^note  Most notably, the accusations targeted members of SWMRS, The Growlers, Part Time, and The Buttertones. Many of these bands would fire the accused members; in addition, Burger artist Justin Champlin (who performed under the pseudonym Nobunny) admitted to having taken advantage of teenage girls on tour and announced that he would be retiring After co-founder Lee Rickard resigned, the label attempted to bounce back with a rebrand (as, no joke, BRGR RCRDS) under the leadership of long-time executive Jesse Zapor-Gray. But Zapor-Grey felt that the label was beyond savlaging and resigned, leading to co-founder Sean Bohrman shutting the label down all together (and infamously responding to a Pitchfork journalist's request for a comment with a GIF of Porky Pig saying That's All, Folks!). Since all of Burger's artists owned all the music they created for the label and could give them to another company, his last act as president was to terminate all contracts signed in the name of the company rather than the artists.
  • The sexual assault claims against Swiss orchestral conductor Charles Dutoit in late December 2017 resulted in him being removed from his positions with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Also, Dutoit and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra mutually went their separate ways.
  • George Hopkins, longtime director of the Cadets and one of the most influential figures in the history of drum corps, was forced to resign from his post in April 2018 after allegations surfaced that he sexually harassed female corps members and employees of the corps' parent organization, Youth Education in the Arts.
  • The sexual misconduct cases R. Kelly accumulated over the course of a decade came back to get the best of him in May 2018, when Spotify stopped promoting his music following their policy on "hate content and hateful conduct", although the music was still available on the service. Then, in the first week of January 2019, the six-part miniseries Surviving R. Kelly was released, going into even greater detail about Kelly's sexual misconduct than anything before it, which culminated in a series of more recent revelations. Soon, Kelly became the subject of a criminal investigation in Georgia, an arrest warrant was put out for his manager, Kelly was dropped by RCA Records, and numerous prominent people, including Chance the Rapper and Lady Gaga, publicly regretted ever working with him. R. Kelly himself was charged with sexual abuse of underage girls in the Federal Courts of Chicago and Brooklyn, as well as state charges in Chicago and Minneapolis. In September 2021, he was found guilty of all charges at his Brooklyn trial and subsequently sentenced to 30 years in prison, and in September 2022, he was further found guilty of additional charges in Chicago, for which he got an additional year in federal prison, and will be 85 by the time he is released (if it happens at all), officially burying his career for good.
  • Around the same time that Kelly got banned from Spotify promotion, Jahseh "XXXTentacion" Onfroy received a similar ban due to some fifteen accusations of domestic violence towards women, but the ban on his music was reversed shortly thereafter due to industry pressure. Just a month later, the 20-year-old rapper was murdered, and Onfroy's resumed availability on Spotify's playlists helped his song "Sad!" become a posthumous #1 hit in the aftermath.
  • Blood on the Dance Floor's entire catalogue was removed from Spotify for promoting hate content, and because of sexual assault allegations against bandleader Dahvie Vanity.
  • In March 2018, Dubstep artist Datsik was accused of sexual assault and rape by multiple women spanning over several years. He stepped down from his label Firepower Records, and all of his appearances at then-upcoming shows and festivals were canceled.
  • Dave Matthews Band fired longtime member Boyd Tinsley in May 2018 after a sexual assault lawsuit against the violinist/mandolinist was made public; James Frost-Winn, a trumpeter for Tinsley's side-project Crystal Garden, accused him of making unwanted sexual advances towards him. Tinsley had taken a sabbatical from DMB in February and on the same day, he was served the lawsuit and told the other members of the band nothing more other than he was taking some time off to look after his family. When DMB dismissed Tinsley from the group, less than 24 hours after the allegations were made public a few months later, they indicated they were "shocked by these disturbing allegations and we were not previously aware of them."
  • Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster William Preucil, Jr. and principal trombonist Massimo La Rosa were dismissed from the orchestra in October 2018 over sexual misconduct allegations. Preucil also resigned from his teaching position at the Cleveland Institute of Music and his recordings for the Suzuki Violin Books were replaced.
  • Rock singer Ryan Adams's career was halted in 2019 when several women - including singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, his ex-wife Mandy Moore, and an anonymous teenage musician - accused him of controlling behavior, sexual misconduct and harassment in a The New York Times article. Shortly thereafter, his then-upcoming album Big Colors was pulled from its release date by Capitol Records, with the UK tour promoting the album being cancelled and lead single "Fuck the Rain" removed from streaming services; two other planned albums were also delayed. Adams initially denied the allegations but later issued a public apology for his behavior in July 2020.
  • Orchestral composer Jeremy Soule (most known for his work in video game soundtracks since the mid-'90s) was hit with allegations of rape and sexual abuse in August 2019, respectively by indie game developer Nathalie Lawhead and vocalist Aeralie Brighton. While no charges were filed, he was promptly dropped by the Materia Collective label (ending collaboration work on his symphony, The Northerner, which had been in Development Hell since 2013), and Soule's social media pages were all taken down, followed by the shutdown of his Bandcamp and music distribution platform, DirectSong. He hasn't appeared active in production or anything in the public eye ever since.
  • Spanish opera singer and conductor Placido Domingo, one of the famous "Three Tenors", backed out of a Metropolitan Opera performance of Verdi's Macbeth in September 2019 amidst allegations of sexual misconduct, and resigned as General Director of the Los Angeles Opera one month later. In February 2020, the American Guild of Musical Artists confirmed that Domingo indeed made unwanted sexual advances, leading the singer to resign from the guild one month later. Despite this, Domingo has continued to sing and conduct to this day.
  • Lorna Shore vocalist CJ McCreery was fired from the group on December 23, 2019, due to multiple allegations of pervasive Domestic Abuse, with one of the exes (not the one who initially blew the whistle, as that was a private event that she threatened to make public if the band didn't act immediately) posting many graphic accounts of horrifying sexual and emotional abuse, serial infidelity, pathological deceitfulness, gaslighting, repeated pursuits (and, in some cases, outright grooming) of underage girls, and virulent misogyny and racism. Austin Archey quickly expressed his hatred and disgust for McCreery and admitted that he was part of the problem, as he alluded to being dimly aware of other accusations against him that were floating around Twitter that he failed to pay attention to earlier. Adam De Micco's girlfriend also made various posts on Reddit that clarified that McCreery was already on his way out before the incident either way, as they were tired of his rude, lazy, and selfish behavior and his embarrassing and disgraceful conduct while on tour, and the accusations greatly expedited the process by providing them with something truly heinous that they had to act upon.
    
    McCreery eventually resurfaced with an explanation video in June of 2020, which accomplished very little other than inviting a scathing rebuke from his former Signs of the Swarm bandmate Bobby Crow, who denied knowing anything about McCreery's relationships but stated in no uncertain terms that the video was a classic example of McCreery attempting to lie and obfuscate his way out of consequences like he did every time he got called out for something he did while on tour, and also said that McCreery abusing women would be perfectly in character given his behavior while he was in the band. Signs' agent Dan DeFonce additionally vowed to ensure that he would never play a show or be in another band again and given DeFonce's longstanding vocal hatred of McCreery, this is likely not an empty threat.
  • McCreery's own former Signs of the Swarm bandmate Cory Smarsh was fired in August of 2021 after his most recent ex came forward about years of physical and emotional abuse from Smarsh (including a long trend of violent and destructive outbursts that resulted in Smarsh destroying property) and posted pictures of bruises that Smarsh had left on her and walls and doors that he had smashed in their apartment, while another ex came forward about how Smarsh had dated her when he was eighteen and she was fourteen and had sexually abused her.
  • Former Clawhammer vocalist Chrissy Jones had what is left of his career ended in June 2020 when numerous women came forward about persistent grooming and sexually predatory behavior towards underage girls.
  • Homewrecker was thrown off of Good Fight Music in June 2020, after numerous women accused frontman Matt Barnum of sexually predatory behavior towards them while they were minors, while similar accusations against drummer Matt Izzi also came up. The rest of Homewrecker threw Barnum out the day after, while Izzi himself was thrown out of his other band Scorched.
  • Simple Plan's bassist David Desrosiers left the band on July 10, 2020, after he was accused of sexual misconduct by and making inappropriate jokes towards numerous women on social media. Five days later, touring bassist Chady Awad was fired due to similar accusations.
  • Issues clean singer Tyler Carter was fired in September 2020, after numerous accusations of sexually predatory behavior and grooming of underage fans were brought to the band's attention.
  • Shrine of Malice vocalist Greg Gilbert was fired in September 2020, after footage emerged of him sexually assaulting his unconscious and extremely intoxicated ex-girlfriend (footage that he had taken himself).
• Even the Metropolitan Opera wasn't immune to this trope:
  • Since making her debut at the Met in 1977, soprano Kathleen Battle was no stranger to controversy both on and off stage. But her Met stint ended during rehearsals for a 1994 production of Gaetano Donizetti's opera La Fille du Régiment where she criticized her fellow performers and demanded they not look at her, which caused then-general manager Joseph Volpe to dismiss her from the production. Although her singing career wasn't affected, Battle hasn't performed in opera ever since. It wouldn't be until 22 years later that she would return to perform at the Met.
  • Longtime music director James Levine, who was also the music director for the Ravinia Festival, the Munich Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was dropped from both the Met and the Ravinia Festival after sexual abuse allegations against him were reported on December 3, 2017, after Levine conducted his final performance at the Met the day before. Levine eventually died of natural causes on March 9, 2021, after being absent from the business for over three years.
  • While theatre producer John Copley is still active in both America and his native Britain, he was dropped from the Met's production of Gioachino Rossini's opera Semiramide for his inappropriate behavior in the rehearsal room.
• Soft drink giant Pepsi terminated (or at least didn't renew) sponsorship deals with four artists due to controversies, resulting in this trope:
  • In 1987, David Bowie courted a sponsorship deal with Pepsi to secure funding for the Glass Spider Tour, an elaborate world tour in support of Never Let Me Down. During the North American leg, Bowie was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in Dallas, Texas. Though he was acquitted by a grand jury, the claims resulted in Pepsi cutting off their deal with him, halting plans for Russian and South American legs.
  • In 1989, their commercial with Madonna to promote her album Like a Prayer as well as the forthcoming music video of the Title Track was withdrawn due to various religious groups including the Vatican protesting said video due to its content and as result, Pepsi terminated the deal, which also included sponsoring the singer's Blond Ambition Tour, though she was allowed to keep $5 million fee from the deal. Fortunately, Pepsi would eventually re-air the commercial in 2023 on MTV during the channel's Video Music Awards that year as one of the five classic commercials that re-aired on TV to mark the soft drink's 125th anniversary.
  • In 1993, they chose not to continue their near-decade long association with Michael Jackson after the Dangerous World Tour they backed ended early; while it wasn't cited as the official reasoning, by that point the first child molestation allegations against him had gone public.^note It probably didn't help that their ties were well-known enough that when one show in Singapore had to be postponed a day due to Jackson collapsing from dehydration, the local Coke bottler put up a banner that read "Dehydrated? There's always Coke"! However, they resumed doing ads featuring his music after his death in 2009, most notably sponsoring the 25th anniversary of his album Bad in 2012.
  • In 2002, they pulled a forthcoming commercial featuring rapper Ludacris after a boycott led by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who called the soft drink giant immoral for using him to do the ads due to the lyrical content of his music. This prompted a backlash from Def Jam co-founder, Hip Hop Summit Action Network head and hip-hop pioneer Russell Simmons, who accused Pepsi of hypocrisy and racial insensitivity over their then-recent ads featuring The Osbournes, who were also no stranger to controversy, though fortunately Pepsi would make a donation to the HHSAN as well as the rapper's eponymous charitable foundation and even offered Ludacris to do a series of ads detailing the history of hip-hop to which he declined as he felt the ship had sailed.
• What comes to mind when the role of a professional orchestral harp player is considered? Does it include either of the following, for which both women concerned lost their "By Royal Appointment" status as Court Harpist to members of the Windsor Family?
  • Royal Harpist Jemima Phillips was jailed in 2009 for the burglaries and acts of theft and fraud she committed to support a drug habit that was spiralling out of control.
  • A few years later in 2018, harpist Danielle Perret was jailed for many counts of sexual acts with underage boys. A second set of charges were levelled at her husband, who joined in the fun and games. It is not thought that either woman will be playing for the Royal Family at any time soon and will find it impossible to get orchestral work.
• Anchors Up, a nationally famous punk bar in Haverhill, Massachusetts, was permanently shut down in 2015 after a man who was attending a show at the venue was jumped, beaten to a comatose state, and left for dead by numerous assailants. The bar's fate was sealed soon after an investigation revealed that not only did at least one employee assist in staging the man up to get jumped, but the owner of the venue likely knew well in advance that the attack was being planned, and still allowed it to happen.
• In November 2019, Korean pop stars Jung Joon-young and Choi Jong-hoon were both sentenced to five to six years in prison for committing a string of gang rapes that they also filmed and distributed online through chat rooms. Jung quit the industry in self-exile after confessing to his crimes, while Choi retired from his group FT Island as a result.
• John Finberg, a well-known booking agent and the owner of First Row Talent and Enter the Vault (the service he sold his tickets through), lost the vast majority of his clients (including some of his biggest, namely Nightwish, Delain, and Amorphis) in the fall of 2020 after a scathing expose was posted on MetalSucks regarding well over a decade's worth of sexually predatory and perverted behavior (including multiple accusations of sexual assault), financial exploitation of bands and promoters, vindictive and vengeful behavior towards anyone who angered him, and, in multiple cases, sending over hired goons to harass and threaten people who had angered him. The mood in the industry was more one of relief and even celebration at times, as many people had been fully aware of his behaviors and activities well before this and had been forced to keep their mouths shut due to a combination of Music Is Politics and their own fears of Finberg going scorched earth and destroying their careers. ^note Rumor has it that he did try to go scorched earth on MetalSucks after the expose, but by that point his image had been so utterly tarnished that not even his usual goons wanted anything to do with him.
• Shortly after the release of New Adventures in Hi-Fi in 1996, R.E.M. fired their longtime manager, Jefferson Holt, after getting word that he had a history of sexually harassing the band's supporting staff. R.E.M. additionally altered the lyrics to "Little America" in subsequent live performances, as the song repeatedly namedrops Holt; all references to "Jefferson" and "Jeffers" became jabs at "Washington" as an expression of disillusionment towards the American government (e.g. "Washington, I think we're lost").
• In a label-ending misdemeanor, former Nine Inch Nails manager John Malm's failed legal battle with frontman Trent Reznor led to the closure of Nothing Records, the label that Malm and Reznor founded under Interscope after Reznor's departure from TVT Records. Malm had sued Reznor for unpaid commissions, while Reznor filed a countersuit alleging that Malm had taken advantage of Reznor's substance abuse throughout the 1990s by tricking him into fraudulent and unethical contracts that put a percentage of Reznor's gross earnings into Malm's pockets - something Reznor wouldn't discover until after sobering up. This led to Reznor leaving Nothing Records, and after the jury ended up in favor of him rather than Malm, the label was closed for good.

Bands

• Japanese funk and hip-hop band, ALI, went on an indefinite hiatus in April 2021 after their drummer, Kahadio, was arrested for fraud and participating in a refund scam. As a result, most of their songs were pulled from streaming platforms and their opening song for The World Ends with You was changed just one day before the anime was set to air. This one has a happy ending however as the band returned in November 2021, sans Kahadio, re-uploading their music on streaming services and YouTube.
• Punk rock group Anti-Flag suddenly disbanded in July 2023 amidst many accusations of rape and sexual assault made against frontman Justin Sane, leading the other members to cease all ties with him and directly condemn his actions. Several bands also left their record label A-F Records in the coming days as a result.
• AOA, once a popular K-Pop girl group/band, came under controversy in the summer of 2020, when former member Mina, who left in 2019, posted allegations of being bullied by one of the members to the point of becoming suicidal. The situation was exacerbated when Jimin, the rapper and leader, responded with the word "Fiction" on her Instagram stories, and was subsequently outed as the member who had bullied Mina. The backlash was swift as Mina exposed more of her traumatic experiences with being bullied, and even the other members haven't escaped unscathed. Seolhyun, for example, was accused of being a bystander to the bullying, and many had called for her to be removed from the drama series she acted in as well, though she was ultimately allowed to remain in the show. However, Jimin's reputation has suffered the most, with her quitting the group and leaving the industry in the wake of the scandal, and it is unlikely she will ever be an idol again.
• As I Lay Dying broke up after lead singer Tim Lambesis was arrested after attempting to hire a hitman to murder his ex-wife. The remaining members and Shane Blay of Oh, Sleeper subsequently formed another band, Wovenwar. Lambesis got out of prison in late 2016, and he eventually reformed As I Lay Dying with the other members. However, this decision has led to a mixed reception, with fans unsure whether they should continue to support them and some metal publications taking the step of boycotting the reformed group.
• American indie rock/pop punk band Beach Slang abruptly broke up in January 2021 after the band's former manager went public with allegations of emotional abuse by the band's frontman and sole consistent member James Alex.
• English boy band Blue was in New York City when they witnessed the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. In the band's interview with the British newspaper The Sun, singer Lee Ryan said something to the effect of, "We don't want to talk about New York. Let's talk about something else like the whales dying." However, he was allegedly misquoted as saying that the NYC situation was "blown out of proportion" and asked, "What about whales? They are ignoring more important animals. Animals need saving and that's more important." Unsurprisingly, many Americans who supported The War on Terror saw Lee's statement as insensitive to the victims of the attacks, causing the band to lose an American record deal and nearly destroy their UK image. In the end, Blue went on hiatus in 2004 after the incident, but reunited seven years later as the UK's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest, coming in very close to the top 10 (11th place) with 100 points for "I Can", in addition to an appearance on The Big Reunion.
• American rap group/boy band BROCKHAMPTON had a key member of theirs at the time in Ameer Vann (one of their most popular members, and the member whose face appeared on each of the three SATURATION albums released in 2017 that catapulted them to fame) be forced out of the group in May 2018. This occurred after reports of alleged sexual misconduct and abuse by him toward multiple women were released publicly, with some of them claiming he was "emotionally manipulative and mentally abusive" and that one alleged victim was a minor at the time. Vann responded to the allegations in a series of tweets where he stated that he had "cheated and been dismissive to [his] exes" in several relationships but denied engaging in sexual misconduct or sexual relations with a minor. In addition to the situation resulting in the group kicking Vann out, they also cancelled their remaining tour dates that year and shelved the then-upcoming album they had been promoting at the time, PUPPY. Dom McLennon, another member of the group, later claimed that Vann had arranged for one of his friends to be robbed, which he reportedly found out about after Vann's departure from the group. The group later released a song in 2019 called "DEARLY DEPARTED" where Dom raps a deeply critical verse; the verse contains numerous details that align with Vann as well as the incident that reportedly happened, although Vann is not mentioned by name.
• Australian metalcore band Dealer is effectively no more as all members quit in June 2020 after mental and sexual abuse allegations came up against singer Aiden Holmes. Before Dealer's formation, Holmes was kicked out of Alpha Wolf for similar reasons.
• On March 10, 2003, just ten days before the invasion of Iraq, the Dixie Chicks were performing in London. There, lead singer Natalie Maines told the crowd she opposed the war and was ashamed that President George W. Bush came from her home state of Texas, comments that earned applause from the British crowd (where public opinion was staunchly against the war) but infuriated her fans back home. At the time, American Country Music was filled with pro-war jingoism almost to the point of parody, and many fans saw Maines' opposition to the war as borderline treasonous. Virtually overnight, one of the biggest country acts and all-female music groups in history was dropped from American country radio; the band's singles rapidly fell off the charts, Maines received death threats, bandmate Emily Robison's house was vandalized, and one radio station in Louisiana held a promotion where listeners have their Dixie Chicks albums and merchandise crushed by a bulldozer. They recorded another album, Taking the Long Way in 2006, one that was heavily informed by the controversy at that, and while it was commercially and critically successful, this was in spite of a near-total rejection from country fandom and radio. The album's hit single "Not Ready to Make Nice" peaked at #4 on the Hot 100 and won both Record and Song of the Year at the 2007 Grammys, but it only reached #36 on the country chart. Two years later, they went on hiatus; Robison and Martie Maguire did one album in 2010 as Court Yard Hounds. The worst part? Just a few years later, Maines would enjoy the last laugh when the rest of the country turned against the war, such that she commemorated the ten-year anniversary of her comments by literally tweeting out "I was right." It didn't help the band recover its past glories, though; after their Accidents & Accusations Tour in 2006, they wouldn't tour the US as a headlining act again until 2016. To this day, many country fans still haven't forgiven them, with their collaboration with Taylor Swift on "Soon You'll Get Better" in 2019 leading to many angry calls to radio stations that played it. They would not release another album until Gaslighter in 2020 (by which point increasing awareness of the potentially racist connotations of the word "Dixie" sparked a rename to just "The Chicks"), and while critical reception was favorable, radio still stiffed the singles.
• Enabler broke up and its lead singer/guitarist Jeff Lohrber left music for good after former bassist and Lohrber's ex-girlfriend Amanda Daniels went public about the details of their relationship, which included some truly horrifying accounts of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and painted Lohrber as an unstable and deeply disturbed individual who needed professional help and absolutely would not get it.
• The mathcore band Gaza, best known for their political and anti-religious lyrics, disbanded in 2013 after a blogger accused lead singer Jon Parkin of raping her. However, this wasn't what broke them up: while Parkin himself denied the allegation (albeit with erratic behavior that made him look guilty), his victim retracted her statement after the two confronted one another. What did break them up was that the band simply could not handle Parkin's volatile and controlling personality any longer, and decided to call it quits. The remaining members went off to make a band similar to Gaza called Cult Leader, while Parkin retired from the music scene afterward and focused on an educational career.
• Good English was an up-and-coming indie band made up of three sisters and based in Dayton, Ohio. However, they quickly came under fire in 2016 when Leslie Rasmussen, their drummer, spoke out in defense of Brock Turner, a Stanford University swimmer and childhood friend of hers who had been convicted in a high-profile rape case. She had written a character letter to the court, in which she said that the entire incident was "a big misunderstanding" and made statements that perpetuated dangerous rape myths, blaming alcohol, the party culture on campus, and Turner's victim for getting drunk in the first place, trying to downplay the severity of the sexual assault, and claiming that only strangers can be rapists. Many people were outraged by the letter, and the band faced a lot of backlash to the point where they had to delete their Facebook and Twitter accounts and lost four shows. Although Rasmussen posted an apology on her personal Facebook pages, the damage was done. Good English ended up losing several concert engagements and were even removed from scheduled appearances at the Dayton Music Art & Film Festival and New York's Northside Festival. Furthermore, the band's publicity label, Behind The Curtains Media, ended up severing ties with them, and they have since disappeared into obscurity.
• All the members of Hedley, a Canadian pop-rock group, were accused of sexual assault by young fans with their stories being shared on Twitter by an anonymous Twitter account. The fans were primarily female and some were as young as 14. Sometime after, a woman from Ottawa accused lead singer Jacob Hoggard of sexual assault/rape. As a result, their scheduled performance at the 2018 Juno Awards was pulled and their songs were pulled in many radio stations. They were also dropped by their management. Although they denied the allegations and continued on with their Cageless tour, they apologized, saying that they want to reach out to people they have let down and that the band does plan to return. However, Hoggard has since been charged and was eventually sentenced to five years in prison in 2022, while the band is now on an indefinite hiatus.
• Japanese group Hysteric Blue broke up in 2004 after their guitarist Naoki Akamatsu pled guilty to being a serial rapist.
• I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME drummer Ryan Seaman was hit in March 2023 with several allegations of stealing from bassist/writer/singer/frontman Dallon Weekes, with several of Weekes' friends, family, and musical associates accusing or at least alluding to Seaman having secretly signed himself up as the owner of Dallon's songwriting loyalties, and had stolen $26 thousand before he was caught. Weekes remained silent on the matter until September 2023, when he officially announced that Seaman had been fired following "a series of broken trusts", leaving him the sole member.
• Iced Earth:
  • The band briefly included guitarist Ernie Carletti, but before they had recorded anything with him he was arrested on rape charges and immediately fired from the band.
  • In early 2021, frontman Jon Schaffer was identified as one of the insurrectionists at the January 6 Capitol siege and arrested later that month. All of Iced Earth's members except drummer Brent Smedley left the following February; while vocalist Stu Block didn't say why he left, bassist Luke Appleton implied it was due to Schaffer's involvement in the siege. Schaffer's arrest also caused his side projects Demons & Wizards and Purgatory to be kicked off of Century Media Records.
  • Demons & Wizards ended in February 2021, after its other member Hansi Kürsch quit the project and announced he would no longer collaborate with Jon Schaffer.
• Welsh rock band Lostprophets announced that they had split in 2013 after the disturbing child molestation charges against singer Ian Watkins, which he has pleaded guilty to, and is now serving a 35-year prison sentence and is registered as a sex offender. The other members subsequently formed a new band called No Devotion.
• Metalcore band Lotus Eater had their momentum come to a screeching halt in July 2021 when multiple women came forward with sexual assault allegations against vocalist Paul Collins. It didn't take too long for remaining members Cameron Humphrey and Aiden Cooper to disband Lotus Eater.
• The Lovin' Spoonful were one of the most popular and respected folk-rock groups of the 1960s, with several hit singles to their name. Their career began to unravel in 1967 when guitarist Zal Yanovsky was arrested for possession of marijuana during a drug bust in San Francisco. Yanovsky, a Canadian citizen, was worried he would be deported because of the incident, and police pressured him to give up the name of his dealer. This resulted in the hippie movement turning their backs on the band, with full-page ads being taken out in underground newspapers encouraging a boycott of their music. Yanovsky felt compelled to leave the band to spare his bandmates from long-lasting damage to their career and quit in May 1967. Unfortunately, their career never recovered, and they only reached the top 40 one more time before they broke up in 1969. However, lead singer John Sebastian was able to launch a successful solo career soon afterward with his well-regarded impromptu performance at the Woodstock Festival that summer, and later writing and performing the theme song for Welcome Back, Kotter, "Welcome Back", in 1976.
• Marilyn Manson:
  • Gidget Gein, the band's second bassist, was fired via telegram on Christmas Eve 1993 while in rehab for his latest overdose. Like the Dave Mustaine/Metallica and Steven Adler/Guns N' Roses situations, this was ironic as the members of Marilyn Manson were almost all notorious drug addicts. Gein died of a fatal overdose in 2008.
  • In 2017, Twiggy Ramirez, who succeeded Gein as bassist, was fired after his ex-girlfriend, Jack Off Jill frontwoman Jessicka Addams, accused him of rape and abusive, controlling behavior.
  • Manson himself was named by Evan Rachel Wood as her previously-unnamed abuser in 2021, followed by at least fifteen other women (including Esmé Bianco and Phoebe Bridgers) coming forward with very similar stories. Most damningly, Manson's former synth tech-turned-personal assistant Dan Cleary's old tweet that backed Wood's accusations and all other abuse accusations against Manson resurfaced (where Cleary said while he wanted no part of what he claims is "cancel culture", he wanted the world to know that those women spoke the truth). Wes Borland would go on to echo Cleary's statements, backing both Wood's accusations and those of the other women based on what he personally witnessed in the nine months that he was in the band and referring to him as a "bad fucking guy". This resulted in Loma Vista Recordings throwing Manson off their label and ceasing all further promotion of We Are Chaos, his most recent full-length album, while Creative Artists Agency also removed him from its roster, and his scheduled appearances in American Gods and Creepshow were cancelled, with the filmed footage from the former apparently being cut from the final product.
• Megadeth:
  • In 1987, guitarist Chris Poland was dropped from the band after Dave Mustaine caught wind of Poland selling their equipment for drug money; he was replaced by Jeff Young. Meanwhile, drummer Gar Samuelson was so compromised on such a frequent basis due to his extremely heavy drinking and heroin usage that he could barely function, so Chuck Behler took his place.
  • Founding bassist Dave Ellefson was fired in May 2021 after he was accused of grooming an underage fan, with screencaps of sexual conversations and at least one video of him masturbating that he had sent being provided as evidence. He was eventually replaced by James LoMenzo (who previously played with the band from 2003-2010), and his contributions to their 2022 album The Sick, the Dying... and the Dead! were removed from the final album and were re-recorded by Steve Di Giorgio.
• Menudo members Sergio Gonzalez and Ruben Gomez were fired from the band in 1990 after they were arrested for cannabis possession at the Miami International Airport.
• Milli Vanilli's fame and fortune ended in just a year after their breakthrough album, Girl You Know It's True, was released. The album's producer Frank Farian admitted that the duo didn't actually provide the vocals nor wrote any of the songs for the album, creating a chain reaction of events that resulted in the duo's Grammy Award for Best New Artist being withdrawn, Arista Records voluntarily destroying all unsold copies of Girl You Know It's True and the album masters, and dozens of lawsuits against the duo from customers demanding refunds. Despite this, they actually didn't immediately die off from the fallout, as the duo continued performing up until co-frontman Rob Pilatus died of a drug overdose in 1998.
• Nachtmystium (and, by extent, Blake Judd) finally folded for good when Judd, who would spend many years scamming fans and screwing over bandmates in shady business deals, blew his absolute last chance to save his career after failing to send preorder copies of The World We Left Behind that had been purchased from him. After enough people went after him for it, Judd then initiated a social media blackout, which prompted Century Media Records to send the copies themselves and drop Nachtmystium from their label. Judd did try to attempt a reformation of Nachtmystium and even was picked up by Earache Records, but most people feel he'll relapse into his dark ways as usual. This was not helped when it was revealed he started up a label selling bootleg albums of other bands such as Judas Iscariot, fracturing whatever respect some had left for him.
• Noble Beast died with Sir Robert's career after his ex came out on social media about how he had dated her when she was underage, had been emotionally and sexually abusive with her, and possessed child pornography, which Sir Robert mostly (aside from the part about the child pornography) admitted was true.
• Pink Floyd:
  • Roger Waters fired keyboardist Richard Wright from the band in 1979. The other band members were annoyed by Wright's lack of contribution to The Wall, particularly after he declined to cut short his vacation when recording fell behind schedule. Waters was eventually forced to hire Wright back for the tour as a salaried musician, which ironically made him the only one of the core four members of Pink Floyd to profit from the tour, which lost money. Wright returned to the band in 1987, two years after Waters' own acrimonious departure, but due to legal complications, he would not be re-instated as an official member until 1990.
  • In 2022, Polish authorities canceled two planned solo concerts by Roger Waters in the country after he published an open letter to Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska urging her husband to surrender to Russia during the second leg of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Waters previously had a large fanbase in Poland, but his open support of Russia resulted in widespread backlash over there thanks to Poland having a nearly 200-year history of being persecuted by Russia both before and during the Soviet era.
• The Posies were one of the most respected bands in Power Pop, with a long, influential career and tons of industry clout. That all went away in 2021 when co-leader Ken Stringfellow was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, accusations that went public that October when a Seattle public radio station detailed them in a widely shared article. The band's other co-leader Jon Auer had already quit the band that August after hearing from a friend of his who had accused Stringfellow. Auer supported his friend and the other women, and cut all ties with Stringfellow immediately. The band's drummer Frankie Siragusa also quit after hearing about the accusations, and the Posies disintegrated shortly thereafter. Jody Stephens, the lone surviving member of power pop icons Big Star whom both Auer and Stringfellow had been members of in its later reunion years, also disassociated himself and Big Star from Stringfellow and disinvited him from an all-star Big Star tribute concert that was held shortly thereafter.
• Public Enemy:
  • The antics of Richard "Professor Griff" Griffin nearly destroyed the group's initial success in the late '80s, when he gave several interviews expressing homophobic and antisemitic views. One particularly provocative comment came out of Griff's 1989 interview with The Washington Times, in which he asserted that, "Jews are responsible for the majority of the wickedness in the world." Griff was initially fired in response to the backlash, and when an attempt to let him rejoin Public Enemy was met with resistance, Carlton "Chuck D" Ridenhour was forced to briefly disband the group. Despite a few public appearances together with Chuck, Griff has never performed with the group since. While Griff has expressed remorse for his previous comments, he has still found ways to further offend the Jewish community, such as the 2020 podcast interview which got Nick Cannon fired from Viacom (see Live-Action TV).
  • William "Flavor Flav" Drayton was kicked out of Public Enemy in March 2020, when Public Enemy Radio (a version of the group featuring Chuck D but not Flav) performed at a campaign event for Senator Bernie Sanders. Flav quickly distanced himself from the performance and sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Sanders campaign denouncing their use of his music and likeness, to which Public Enemy released a statement that they would be abruptly parting ways with Flav after 37 years. This quickly led to recurring jokes on social media (especially among detractors of Sanders) that Sanders had Yoko Oh No'ed the group. Chuck D later stated that there had been tensions building between him and Flavor Flav for years and that the latter had even been "suspended" from the band since 2016 after he refused to perform with PE at a benefit concert organized by Harry Belafonte. The cease-and-desist letter was simply the last straw for Chuck. Although Chuck would later claim that the whole thing was an April Fools' joke that he decided to abandon due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Flav disputed that angle for a few months. By the time their next single was released in June, Flav returned to the band.
• The fast-rising career of queercore indie band PWR BTTM was over within five days in May 2017 after sexual assault, predatory behavior, and anti-Semitism allegations were made against frontman Ben Hopkins. Polyvinyl went as far as to drop the band and delete their albums from distribution, something very unprecedented in music (for context, the only other time this happened in the industry was in the aftermath of the high-profile lip-sync scandal that destroyed Milli Vanilli).
• Raze was a Tulsa-based Christian pop band that rose to prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s with songs such as "Place in My Heart" and "More Than a Dream"; only for the band to collapse in scandal in March 2001 when one of the group's members, Ja'Marc Davis, was arrested on the day that the band was scheduled to begin a tour for their sophomore album "The Plan" and charged with 11 counts related to the sexual abuse of a 13-year-old backup dancer^note Davis had briefly left the group in 1999; but the departure was not known to the general public and Davis managed to return soon after, resulting in Raze's music being pulled from Christian radio and Christian bookstores; the WOW series of videos removing Raze's videos from a 2002 DVD release (the VHS versions had already been released by then) and - 11 days after Davis pleaded guilty to the charges - Raze quietly dissolved in November 2001.
• In late August 2017, the Toronto-based Sheraton Cadwell Orchestra ceased operations after it was revealed they'd sent out an email saying they would only allow singers who were "physically fit and slim".
• SiIvaGunner:
  • Le Ruse Bird was let go for uploading "Puzzle Room - Kirby: Planet Robobot", a shock video that links to another shock video, without permission from the rest of the staff. Le Ruse Bird did apologize for the rip and was allowed back into the group. However, he remains permanently barred from uploading any content.
  • An unidentified member of the team was fired for uploading the troll video "Environmental Noises - Super Smash Bros. Brawl" without anyone's consent.
• A unique regional example of this trope is with Russian deathcore act Slaughter to Prevail. They have been unable to tour Europe (despite many attempts) due to singer Alex Terrible once having a black sun tattoo and doing a photoshoot with a fascist Russian group in his youth. Despite having covered up his black sun tattoo and never holding any fascist ideologies (plus, it is doubtful Sumerian would have signed Slaughter to Prevail if they had known Alex had any ties to Nazi groups), many European promotions are wary of bringing Slaughter to Prevail to Europe. As late as 2020 the band tried to get a European tour off the ground but were met with resistance from anti-fascist groups, who threatened to shut down their shows. Alex has gone on record saying that he was an idiot in his youth and deeply regrets doing that photoshoot, knowing that it cost him and his band many opportunities. This only applies to Europe, Slaughter to Prevail is still free to tour the rest of the world should a promoter book them and they get the necessary visas.
• Steely Dan broke up following the release of their Gaucho album in 1980, in part due to guitarist/bassist Walter Becker's drug problems, which made it difficult for Donald Fagen to work with his longtime partner. Becker eventually cleaned up, largely because he moved to Hawaii and started a family, and the band would reunite in 1993, with Becker's collaboration only ending with his death in 2017.
• Tau Cross was kicked off of Relapse Records in 2019 after the label was notified of an extensive shout-out to noted Holocaust denier Gerard Menuhin (up to being credited as a major influence on the album) in Rob Miller's section of the thank-you lists in the liner booklet of Messengers of Deception; after examining the lyrics more closely, the label contacted Miller, who denied being a Holocaust denier, and the rest of the band, who had no idea what Miller was talking about and expressed genuine surprise at the allegations. Nonetheless, the label no longer felt comfortable with having Tau Cross on their roster, and they gave them back their masters and back catalog and told them to find another label. Whatever hope the band may have had of saving itself in any way was destroyed not long after, as Rob posted a lengthy response on their official page that, for lack of a more polite way to sum up the sentiment, could be best understood as "sorry, not sorry, fuck you if you can't deal with it." However, Messengers of Deception was reworked and recorded with a new lineup, and released on December 4th, 2020.
• In the late 2010s, the Nu Metal band Trapt, until then best known for their 2002 hit "Headstrong", became notorious for an entirely different reason, as frontman Chris Taylor Brown went on a series of far-right tirades and started fights with other musicians that eventually led Twitter and Facebook to give the band's official accounts the boot. Their 2020 album Shadow Work also wound up bombing with only six hundred copies sold, a figure that Brown also furiously disputed.
• Portland Black Metal band Uada garnered some controversy after they were forced to cancel several shows due to allegations of Nazism. It was later on proven to not be the case (with many close friends and fans of their Portland scene coming to their defense) due to Portland's heavy left-leaning political views and the band was simply alleged to be Nazi-supporting due to controversial band Graveland doing a surprise appearance at a show they were at. Despite that, it is a long-lingering allegation that overshadows them to this day, with even metal site MetalSucks still accusing them of supporting Nazism.
• The Christian Rock band Whiteheart was one of the biggest acts in Christian music during the 1980s and 1990s. However, the band almost met its end in 1985, when lead vocalist Scott Douglas (who himself succeeded original lead vocalist Steve Green when Green decided rock music didn't suit him and moved to the inspirational sub-genre) was kicked out after being arrested for aggravated sexual battery; with one of the band's roadies, Rick Florian, replacing Douglas for the remainder of the band's existence.
• Young and in the Way disbanded in 2018 after being kicked off of their label and the Psycho Las Vegas bill after the operators of the Detroit-based underground/guerilla art space Trumbullplex publicly accused them of multiple incidents of sexual assault and attempted rape that took place at the venue in 2014. While the band did not openly admit wrongdoing, their lack of any real attempt to defend themselves beyond "wasn't us" and the abrupt breakup was taken by many as a tacit admission that the charges were genuine and they had been caught dead to rights, especially given their already-spotty reputations as people.

Musicians

• Guns N' Roses fired original drummer Steven Adler for being so drugged that he only managed to finish one song on the Use Your Illusion albums, "Civil War". Bear in mind that like the Metallica and Marilyn Manson examples, the other members were no strangers to substance abuse.
• BBR Music Group suspended country singer Jimmie Allen indefinitely after a former manager of his filed a lawsuit claiming that he sexually and verbally abused her, and that she had been fired from her role after bringing the allegations to Ash Bowers, Allen's record producer and owner of his management company Wide Open Music. The Western Idaho Fair in Boise also cancelled his appearance on June 1, 2023, and BBR dropped him from the label permanently a week later after a second allegation against him.
• In 2008, Ashanti released her new album The Declaration and the lead single "The Way That I Love You", whose music video, inspired by True Crime shows like Snapped and Forensic Files, had her character murdering her unfaithful boyfriend. The music video was harmless enough and didn't kill her career. Rather, it was the promotional campaign that did her in. To promote the album, she launched a "gotcha-gram" campaign that allowed people to create personalized fake news reports detailing a murder spree, with the recipient indicated as being the killer's next target. In other words, it allowed people to create slick, polished death threats, all wrapped up in a glamorization of domestic violence as a solution to a lover's bad behavior. The campaign was hastily pulled after the backlash, but the damage was done. The single and the album bombed, Ashanti was dropped from Murder Inc. Records, and it wasn't until six years before Ashanti released another album.
• Rapper/singer Azealia Banks was dropped from the line-up of a London festival after going on a Twitter rant claiming Zayn Malik had plagiarized one of her music videos, a rant which included homophobic and racist remarks (and, later, threats of violence, the likes of which were probably the straw that broke the camel's back based on how she threatened to bring firearms into the UK) aimed at the former One Direction bandmate that finally got her suspended from Twitter. Banks returned to Twitter in February 2017 but had her account suspended once again in June 2018 following remarks she made (and deleted) during an exchange with drag queen and RuPaul's Drag Race contestant Monet X Change.
• Bassist Ben Bennett got kicked out of Warbringer immediately following a major tour in 2009. A long history of being a complete asshole culminated in his saying some incredibly cruel things to then-drummer Nic Ritter one night. Ritter ran off and punched a dumpster in anger hard enough to break his hand, putting him out of commission for the rest of the tour, and making John Kevill angry enough to physically pull Bennett out of the van and stomp on his head.
• The career of music publicist Heathcliff Berru and his company Life & Death PR ended in early 2016 when several women in the music industry - including musicians, other music publicists, and employees of festivals - accused him of sexually assaulting them. After Berru made a bungled statement where he vaguely admitted the allegations but blamed them on his drug use, he stepped down from his CEO role with his company. Several of Life or Death's clients began to sever ties with the company as the allegations came out, and several of their biggest clients did the same after Berru's statement. The fallout from the Berru scandal ultimately resulted in the rest of Life or Death's staff electing to leave the company, effectively shutting it down. Some of the employees have since formed another PR firm.
• Singer-songwriter Chuck Berry's career ended in 1959, when he was arrested for transporting a 14-year-old girl across state lines for sexual purposes, a crime for which he ultimately served a year and a half in prison. While Berry would make a comeback in The '70s playing the nostalgic oldies circuit, continued troubles with the law would dog him for the rest of his life.
• Brendan "Cygnus" Brown of Ne Obliviscaris was thrown out around the beginning of 2017 after at least five of his ex-girlfriends came forward with information about how he was physically abusive in his relationships with them.
• 1960s pop singer Anita Bryant destroyed her career and her role as a brand ambassador of the Florida Citrus Commission with her anti-LGBT "Save Our Children" crusade, launched in Florida in 1977 to protest an anti-discrimination ordinance passed by Dade County. While her campaign to get the ordinance repealed was successful and led her to campaign against similar laws across the country, it also spurred a massive backlash from the LGBT community and its allies, which made her a laughingstock overnight and caused many people to boycott Florida orange juice. Many gay bars in America stopped serving screwdrivers and instead served a mixture of apple juice and vodka called the "Anita Bryant Cocktail", and her likeness became a popular subject of parody for drag queens. The controversy caused the Florida Citrus Commission to allow her contract with them to lapse in 1979, while her divorce from her husband Bob Green in 1980 (partly as a result of the stress caused by the boycott) likewise infuriated many Christian conservatives, who saw her as a hypocrite. Since then, her career has been relegated to small venues and charity acts in the southern US, while her name has remained synonymous with homophobia.
• Both Feist and Beck dropped out as the opening act of Arcade Fire's European and American tours respectively in late 2022 as a result of sexual misconduct allegations against Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler, and with Feist donating proceeds from two shows she already played during the tour to a women's aid organization in Dublin.
• Stereophonics fired longtime drummer Stuart Cable in September 2003 after he repeatedly failed to show up at rehearsals and live shows due to being preoccupied with his TV show Cable TV. He was replaced with Javier Weyler starting in 2004, who in turn was succeeded by Jamie Morrison in 2012. Cable himself died in 2010.
• Captured Tracks dropped singer Alex Calder from their roster and canceled the release of his second album after a sexual abuse allegation against him came to their attention.
• Vocatone have gone on record saying that the Vocaloid voice bank YOHIOloid will never receive any sort of update or port due to voice provider YOHIO's rude behavior on social media.
• Noisem fired the Carnes brothers (Tyler and Billy) at some point in 2016 for stealing band money to spend on drugs and trying to get their manager to cook the books to hide the theft. The damage was already done, however; Relapse Records dropped them as a result of the fiasco.
• The Smashing Pumpkins knew about drummer Jimmy Chamberlin's drug problem for some time. They tolerated it until touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin died of an overdose while taking drugs with Chamberlin in July 1996. He was fired shortly afterward but later got clean and rejoined the band in late 1998.
• In the 1950s, Western swing fiddler and bandleader Spade Cooley was one of the most famous musicians in the United States and was both one of the top concert draws of the day and the host of his own television show. His career ended in 1961 when he was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison for brutally beating his wife Ella Mae to death after she asked him for a divorce. The crime shocked the country and led to a media circus surrounding his trial that would be comparable to the O.J. Simpson trial a few decades later. In 1968, Cooley was scheduled to be paroled in 1970, largely for medical reasons. However, he would not live to see that happen: In November 1969, Cooley was granted a furlough from prison to perform at a police benefit concert, and suffered a fatal heart attack shortly after he walked off stage.
• Fans were confused after dark electronic musician William Control^note Previously known as Wil Francis of post-hardcore band Aiden abruptly retired at the end of 2017. In the middle of 2018, a large contingent of female fans came forward with accusations that he'd been essentially running a BDSM cult while on the road behind his wife's back. Allegations went from unsafe kink practices and safeword violations to financial abuse, to in some cases ordering the girl to get a tattoo of his logo above their genitals, with photo and video evidence of these. His wife would leave him in July and police have begun investigations in several countries. He resurfaced about 4 months after the allegations came out, with new music literally telling his victims to kill themselves, and badly faked recorded phone calls "proving his innocence" but has so far only succeeded in embarrassing himself.
• Singer-songwriter Jonny Craig has been kicked out of every band he's been a part of (Dance Gavin Dance, Emarosa, Dance Gavin Dance again, and Slaves) on account of his personality and drug issues and inability to get his shit together, as well as multiple domestic abuse and sexual assault allegations against him. The post-hardcore supergroup Isles and Glaciers will likely remain a one-off for much the same reasons.
• On July 25, 2021, rapper DaBaby went under fire for making homophobic comments while performing at the Rolling Loud Festival, which resulted in his scheduled appearances at Lollapalooza, the Governors Ball Music Festival, Parklife Festival, Day N Vegas, Austin City Limits Festival, Music Midtown and the iHeartRadio Music Festival being cancelled. BoohooMAN also terminated their collaboration with him along with many radio stations pulling the single version of Dua Lipa's "Levitating", which he was the featured artist from their airwaves as a result and replaced it with the solo album version. And when "Levitating" was named the top song of 2021 by Billboard magazine, it was solely credited to Dua Lipa.
• Guitarist C.C. DeVille was fired from the hair metal band Poison in 1991 after a performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. The band was due to play "Unskinny Bop", but DeVille, who was in the middle of a bad cocaine addiction, forgot which song they were supposed to be playing and missed his cue right after they were introduced. Instead, he started playing the opening riff of their earlier hit "Talk Dirty to Me". The band played that song instead, but the other members were clearly annoyed with DeVille, whose guitar became unplugged during the performance. Backstage, the band got into a huge fistfight with DeVille, who was fired on the spot and was soon replaced with Richie Kotzen. DeVille would return to Poison in 1996.
• Paul Di'Anno, who was the lead vocalist for Iron Maiden's first two albums, was asked to leave the band in 1981 after his drug use and general disinterest in the band led to him no-showing gigs and starting fights backstage. He attempted to carve out a solo career for himself, but his continued drug use and violence (on which his autobiography The Beast goes into detail) tanked that too. Di'Anno spent his later years touring with a band singing Iron Maiden classics but was known to consistently turn up onstage drunk out of his mind, with frequently incomprehensible vocals, and he is widely seen as a laughingstock.
• Orri Páll Dýreason, the drummer for Icelandic band Sigur Rós, resigned from the band in 2018 after a female fan came out that he had sexually assaulted her. A few days after this allegation came out, Orri posted on the Sigur Rós Facebook that while he still maintains his innocence, he would be stepping down as the band's drummer and focusing on clearing his name by his own decision. Surprisingly enough, Jonsi and Georg didn't offer any comment aside from Orri's own statement, probably to not taint the band name.
• In an example of a Role-Ending Felony, Static-X guitarist Tripp Eisen was fired in February 2005 after two counts of statutory rape, the first of which he was arrested and released on bail after a few hours in custody. The second occurred a few weeks later after he was arrested for having sex with a 13-year-old after grooming her on the Internet for three months while posing as a Static-X fan. He was fired and replaced by founding guitarist Koichi Fukuda as soon as the band heard about it.
• Pete Farndon, best known as the founding bassist for The Pretenders, was dismissed from the band on June 14, 1982, due to his drug use. He eventually died of a heroin overdose on April 14, 1983. The band's lead guitarist, James Honeyman-Scott, ironically died of a cocaine overdose two days after Farndon's ouster.
• Kevin Fennell, the original drummer for prolific indie rock band Guided by Voices, was fired by band leader Robert Pollard in 2013 after Fennell had tried to sell the drum kit he had used during the recording of the band's landmark 1994 Bee Thousand album on eBay, which angered Pollard. The incident was all for naught for Fennell as well as he didn't get any bidders on his drum kit.
• Craig Fuller, the lead singer and guitarist for the country rock band Pure Prairie League, was forced to leave the band he founded in 1973 when he was tried and convicted for draft evasion. Fuller was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, but he was denied C.O. status and was sentenced to six months in prison. He tried to return to the band after he got out, but he quit after a few shows either due to lack of enthusiasm or work conflicts once his C.O. deferment finally came through. That means he was out of Pure Prairie League in 1975 when his song "Amie" became a #27 Hot 100 hit for them three years after its original release. Fuller eventually received a presidential pardon, but he did not return to the band until 1985.
• Metal band Skeletonwitch fired their lead singer Chance Garnette in October 2014 after he was arrested for assaulting a family member while drunk.
• Italian orchestra conductor Daniele Gatti, best known for his work as principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1996 to 2009 and music director of the Orchestre National de France from 2008 to 2016, was removed from his position as chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in August 2018 after he was accused of inappropriate behavior towards the orchestra's female colleagues. Gatti's conducting career, however, remained unaffected and he was appointed by the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma as its music director that December.
• Guitarist Ruben Gallego was fired from the indie rock band Beach Slang in late 2016 after sexual assault allegations against him were made public.
• Russian conductor Valery Gergiev was fired as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and was dropped by the Edinburgh International Festival, the Vienna Philharmonic’s five-concert US tour, and his management company Felsner Artists because of his support of Russian president Vladimir Putin following the country's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
• Glam Rock singer Gary Glitter's career was vaporised after his 1999 guilty plea to possessing child pornography, leading to a four-month jail sentence. Any faint hope of a comeback was dashed in the mid-2000s after he was convicted of sexually abusing minors in Vietnam. As such, Glitter is now considered a pariah throughout the UK - his songs are un-broadcastable on radio and his performances on Top of the Pops are edited out of repeats of the relevant episodes. Further offenses came to light in 2012 during the Jimmy Savile scandal, and in 2015, Glitter was sentenced to sixteen years in jail and was eventually released on license in 2023, only to be sent back to prison for breaching the license conditions.
• French-British rapper Octavian Oliver Godji, known mononymously as Octavian, had a promising early start to his career after a few successful mixtapes around 2018, as well as successful singles and collaborations with projects like Gorillaz and Skepta. His career ended in late 2020 after allegations by an ex-girlfriend surfaced, claiming she had suffered for years of emotional and physical abuse at his hand (including multiple threats against her life), as well as accusing his management of being complicit by attempting to blackmail an NDA out of her as a cover-up. Octavian was promptly dropped by his label and PR agency, and his former management confirmed that they would not be releasing his scheduled debut album.
• Russian orchestral conductor Mark Gorenstein was dismissed from his position as music director of the country's State Academic Symphony Orchestra "Evgeny Svetlanov" in September 2011 after issues with the orchestra during Gorenstein's nine-year tenure caused 280 musicians to leave voluntarily or be fired. Vladimir Jurowski took his place that October. Despite this, Gorenstein became principal guest conductor of the Novosibirsk Academic Symphony Orchestra and to this day, he maintains a steady conducting career.
• In early 2016, Sony Music Entertainment dropped their business support for producer Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald and terminated his contract a year earlier than it would've expired following an attempt by Kesha to have her contract with the producer terminated by a court of law after claiming he sexually assaulted her and she considered it cruel to have to work with her abuser.^note Kesha had signed on to Dr. Luke's label on the condition that she would record 6 albums with Dr. Luke. By the time the alleged incident occurred she had produced 2 full-length albums. Even though her case was thrown out of court (she had previously made a statement under oath that he hadn't assaulted her but redacted her statement) the negative PR linked to the company's ties with Dr. Luke as well as an outcry from other artists including Lady Gaga and Adele forced their hand. Kesha, who had the public's support through the ordeal, was able to launch a Career Resurrection with her next album Rainbow in 2017. While Luke's career took a major hit following the scandal, he was able to come back in 2020 under the pseudonym "Tyson Trax" when he produced Doja Cat's "Say So", which reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 after a remix featuring Nicki Minaj was released. His reputation remains badly tarnished, though.
• Cee Lo Green is an unusual case of someone whose career was destroyed by peripheral comments over a sex scandal rather than the scandal itself. His comedy series The Good Life was canceled by TBS shortly after getting picked up for a second season, following shocking comments on his Twitter page related to sexual battery accusations made in 2012. Green deactivated his Twitter account (then later reactivated it) and apologized for the tweets but the damage had already been done. TBS proceeded to make him an Un-person, taking down the show's website and removing the series from the TBS mobile app.
• In 2019, Italian operatic tenor Vittorio Grigòlo was dismissed by the Royal Opera House and the Metropolitan Opera, following an incident during a performance of Gounod's Faust in Tokyo with the ROH on tour, in which he allegedly groped a female chorus member at the curtain call, then got into an altercation with other cast members when asked to stop. To this day, however, Grigòlo's career in other European countries has remained unaffected.
• Canadian electronic musician Bruce Haack had a healthy career during the 1960 and 1970s, but it started to fall apart by the end of the decade. In 1978, Haack produced "Haackula" which covered topics such as sex, which got him into trouble mainstream and had to keep his music out of the public eye. Despite that, Haack was able to produce more songs, but the outcome caused damage to him as his mental and physical health started to deteriorate throughout the 1980s until his death in 1988.
• Todd Harrell, the original bassist for 3 Doors Down, was removed from the band in April 2013 after being charged with vehicular homicide in Nashville, Tennessee for a fatal accident caused by his addiction to prescription drugs and painkillers. While out on bail, Harrell was arrested again for a weapons violation, which led to him being sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2018. 3 Doors Down eventually hired Justin Biltonen to take Harrell's place beginning with a performance in Moscow at the end of the following month.
• Australian-born entertainer, musician, and artist Rolf Harris was found guilty in 2014 of sexually assaulting young girls aged between 8-16 between 1968 and 1986. He served 5 years and 9 months imprisonment in England before he was released on May 19, 2017 after a jury failed to reach a verdict during Harris's retrial on further alleged sexual assaults. His paintings and memorials were removed, his TV shows were taken off the air, his music was blacklisted, and he was stripped of his honours, which included a CBE. However, in spite of Harris saying that he wanted to spend his final years in peace, he considered making a TV comeback in 2017. He would eventually die of neck cancer in 2023 at the age of 93.
• Felix Hall, the son of The Specials vocalist Terry Hall, was kicked off a long-running residency on NTS Radio after several DJs spoke out against racial abuse, death threats, and anti-Palestinian messages received from him, with GALA Festival also removing him from their lineup, and labels he'd worked with severing ties with him. This came off as especially shocking given his father's band, the founding band of the 2 Tone ska revival, was known for its socially conscious lyrics and staunch anti-racism, and that Felix played primarily reggae and related genres on NTS.
• British pop group East 17 fired member Brian Harvey in January 1997 after a radio interview in which he made comments that appeared to condone usage of the drug ecstasy, which caused an uproar in the press, leading several British radio stations to remove their music from circulation, and even had the matter being raised in the British Parliament. The incident caused the band to fracture: Shortly after Harvey was fired, fellow member Tony Mortimer quit the band in order to distance himself from the controversy. Almost two years later, Harvey reunited with the other two members but without Mortimer as E-17. Their first single was a hit, but their second was less of one, and their album was a flop. Faced with their waning popularity, the group ultimately broke up in 1999 and didn't get back together until 2006.
• Despite his heavy involvement in the breakup of his band Agalloch, vocalist/guitarist John Haughm was still relatively respected, even if fans were divided about his new project Pillorian. Then in February 2019, all of that ended when it was revealed that after a post he made in tribute to actor Bruno Ganz, a fan noted he left a comment on his own post where he called Facebook "Jewbook" (before settling with the more graphically, "Judenbook"), an obvious antisemitic slang towards Facebook due to quote-unquote "hasn't deleted my post like I've heard about other Ganz tributes...". The result was heavy backlash, with condemnation from former Agalloch band members Aesop Dekker calling him a "tiny edgelord" and Don Anderson releasing a joint statement on the behalf of Aesop and Jason Walton, both calling out John, confirming they have not been friends with him since the 2016 break up, and that John does not represent Agalloch. To add more salt to the wound, Pillorian members Stephen Parker (guitarist) and Trevor Matthews (drummer) departed from the band after the news hit. Mercifully, John would apologize for his comments, but admitted he would be taking a break from music and social media and breaking up Pillorian, essentially stopping his career at a stand-still for an unknown time being. The most ironic part is that Haughm has stated that he had gone to Israel during Agalloch's run and admitted to loving it there. While John himself would amend bridges with his former Agalloch bandmates and consider his behavior in the past (and his comments) as a heavy Old Shame, he's since dedicated most of his time to simply doing art and reissues of Agalloch work, while sternly making it clear Agalloch isn't reuniting as a result.
• Doug Hopkins was the original lead guitarist and songwriter for the Gin Blossoms. During the recording for New Miserable Experience, he started to suffer from alcoholism and depression and was fired by the record label. (The band themselves were hesitant to do so.) New Miserable Experience became the band's breakthrough album and the Hopkins-penned "Hey Jealousy" became a huge hit, but their success was marred when Hopkins took his own life in December 1993 right at the peak of his former band's fame.
• Canadian film and television composer Andrew Huggett had the brakes put on his career after he was arrested by Ottawa police in mid-2020 for possessing child pornography.
• Georgian soprano Tamar Iveri came under fire in June 2014 for her homophobic comments regarding the violence that had erupted during an anti-homophobia rally in Tbilisi in 2013, where she'd written an open letter to the Georgian President stating that she was "quite proud of how Georgian society spat at the parade". Even worse, despite referencing her so-called friends and relatives who are gay, she continued her homophobic tirade, which she also posted on Facebook. When these comments resurfaced a year later, Iveri was due to sing Desdemona in Verdi's Otello at Opera Australia. Despite her denials and attempts to pin the blame on her husband, Opera Australia terminated her contract, and she ended up posting a denial-filled non-apology on her Facebook. Also, the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie dropped her from their production of Un ballo in maschera in 2015, and she hasn't seen much work at major opera companies since then.
• Brian Jones, the founder of The Rolling Stones and their first leader, was fired from the band as due to many drug-related arrests he couldn't get a visa for an upcoming US tour. Less than one month later Jones died under mysterious circumstances.
• American tubist Karl Kramer, best known for his association with the Brass Ring quintet and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, abruptly resigned as Dean of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in July 2015 after the university investigated concerns over his credit card usage.
• Yes keyboardist Igor Khoroshev left the band in 2000 after being accused of sexually assaulting two female security guards on tour. Khoroshev has since worked on film scores.
• Before he formed Motörhead, Lemmy Kilmister was a part of space rock group Hawkwind until he got kicked out for an amphetamine bust in 1975; agents at the Canadian border had mistaken the substance for cocaine and jailed him. Kilmister later joked that he was really fired for "doing the wrong kind of drugs".
• Steve Lukather has intimated in interviews that original singer Bobby Kimball's chronic cocaine addiction led the rest of Toto to fire him in 1984; he wouldn't return till the late '90s.
• After successfully transitioning from country to mainstream pop music with hit songs such as "Constant Craving" and "Miss Chatelaine", Canadian singer k.d. lang's career momentum stopped abruptly after journeying into the very polarizing animal rights movement and organizing a "Meat Stinks" campaign that caused radio stations in her native Alberta ^note  Cattle ranching is a major industry in Alberta, and her campaign was seen as a betrayal by many Albertans and several agriculture-heavy U.S. states ^note  including Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, and Oklahoma to boycott playing her music. lang attempted comebacks in later years, but it was too little, too late. Arguably, lang is one of the few examples of association with PETA being the root of an example of this, as many artists who support PETA (such as Paul McCartney, The B-52s, and Carrie Underwood) have otherwise escaped association with the organization's behavior.
• In 1958, Rock & Roll star Jerry Lee Lewis did a tour of the UK, where a reporter uncovered that Lewis' wife Myra Gale Brown was only thirteen years old — and his first cousin once removed.^note "Once removed" means that one person's grandparent is the other's great-grandparent. Even without the age issue, such a marriage is still void in many U.S. states. Not to mention that at the time he married her, his divorce from this previous wife wasn't yet final. Lewis had to cancel the tour after only three poorly-received concerts, and more importantly, the scandal followed him home; virtually overnight, he went from playing concert arenas to bars and small clubs, and for several years he had to work under a pseudonym to get any airplay at all. It was ten years before he could stage a Career Resurrection, and he had to switch to Country Music to do so.
• Ukrainian classical pianist Valentina Lisitsa was dropped from a Toronto Symphony Orchestra concert in 2015 due to numerous Twitter posts she made about the Ukrainian-Russian conflict. The TSO originally tried keeping the matter quiet to protect her reputation, but Lisitsa's criticism for not allowing her to speak about the cancellation caused CEO Jeff Melanson to reveal a seven-page collage of her remarks, which were intolerant and not representative of Toronto as a whole.
• Manowar guitarist Karl Logan was arrested in 2018 for possession of child pornography, causing him to be fired immediately from the band and replaced by E.V. Martel.
• While it's not known if he had left music for good or just didn't want to be in a touring act any longer when he left Spellcaster, Tyler Loney effectively killed what is left of his career when he savagely beat and attempted to choke out his girlfriend and was subsequently arrested.
• In March 2021, Mumford & Sons banjoist Winston Marshall faced backlash for endorsing the book Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy by controversial right-wing commentator Andy Ngo, which downplayed white supremacist violence and defended the far-right terrorist group the Proud Boys, who had participated in a violent pro-Trump putsch at the U.S. Capitol just a couple of months earlier. Marshall soon put out a statement apologizing to his bandmates and his fans and announced that he would be "taking time away from the band to examine my blindspots". Marshall eventually left the band in June 2021.
• Singer-songwriter Jake McElfresh, playing under the name Front Porch Step when opening for bands such as State Champs and Handguns, was accused of sexual harassment and predatory behavior by several young women in early 2015, leading to his suspension from most of Warped Tour 2015 and his dropping from the record label, as well as being unpaid for his first performance since the allegations were brought up in July 2015. Many musicians from the same label and Warped Tour, such as Buddy Nielsen from Senses Fail, condemned McElfresh over Twitter for using fame for predatory behavior, which seems to be distressingly common among smaller acts on Warped, and it is rumored that Kevin Lyman's attempts to cater to an older audience in the final few years of the tour were motivated at least partially by the amount of bad press that the tour had been receiving due to incidents like this.
• Irish punk band The Pogues fired their lead singer and songwriter Shane McGowan in 1991 for his unreliability due to his crippling alcoholism. He would rejoin the band a decade later.
• British indie rock band Kasabian fired lead singer Tom Meighan in July 2020. Initially, it was reported that Meighan had left for personal health reasons but the next day he pled guilty to assaulting his former fiancee. The band made a statement shortly thereafter confirming they had asked Meighan to leave after he was charged with assault and that they had to hold that information until after his guilty plea. Kasabian eventually regrouped with guitarist and main songwriter Sergio Pizzorno taking up lead vocal duties.
• Mauro Mercurio was fired from Hour of Penance after he drunkenly caused thousands of dollars worth of damage to the backstage area of a Spanish club and very nearly got the entire band arrested.
• Guitarist Matt Mondanile was fired from the indie rock band Real Estate in 2016 after the band had heard allegations of his sexual harassment of women. The details of his firing were not made public by the band until the next year, shortly after additional allegations against him began to pile up. After this, Mondanile's side-project band Ducktails was dropped by Domino Records.
• British R&B singer Mark Morrison was a breakout star in 1996, with his debut album Return of the Mack notching six Top 10 singles on the British charts, its title track in particular not only going to #1 but also becoming a crossover hit in the US that went to #2 there. However, as Todd in the Shadows noted in an episode of One-Hit Wonderland covering him, shortly afterwards Morrison was beset by a torrent of run-ins with the law that snapped his momentum, The Last Straw being when he hired a lookalike to perform community service in his place while he went on tour. This got him a year in prison (not his first prison sentence), and his career never recovered. An attempted comeback in 2000 was short-circuited by his signing to Death Row Records at a time when that label was circling the drain and its founder Suge Knight was facing his own mounting legal problems.
• Metallica lead guitarist Dave Mustaine was kicked out of the band in April 1983 for his substance abuse issues, which led Mustaine to form Megadeth soon after. Unlike the rest of "Alcoholica", Mustaine was a violent and angry drunk, who had started fights both on and off stage. It's rumored that the song "Master of Puppets" was a shot at Mustaine's cocaine habit.
• Cloven Hoof frontman Russ North was fired from the band in 2012 after getting drunk before a concert in Cyprus and humiliating himself and the rest of the band when he gave a truly awful performance due to being so intoxicated that he literally fell flat on his back at one point in the show. He's not been active since then, implying the incident killed his career as most people wouldn't want to work with someone who Can't Hold His Liquor.
• Keigo Oyamada, better known for performing under the moniker Cornelius, resigned from his role as the composer for the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics when interviews from The '90s resurfaced that had Oyamada revealing that he had bullied several disabled classmates. Among some of the horrific things that Oyamada said he did, he locked a classmate in a vaulting box, wrapped another student in a gym mat, taped a cardboard box around the head of another student and poured chalk inside, made fun of a disabled student running a long-distance race, forced yet another student to eat their own feces, and forced one more student to masturbate in front of other students. The fact that Oyamada dismissed these incidents with a laugh in these interviews didn't help matters, and his actions became an infamous subject in Japanese online circles. Once he was announced as the composer for the opening ceremony, the interviews went viral, causing widespread criticism both inside and outside Japanese social media circles. Oyamada posted an apology to Twitter two days after the announcement, and while the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games criticized his actions, and said that they were not aware of the interviews, they stood by him and said that he would not be dismissed from the ceremony, with even the CEO of the committee, Toshirō Mutō, wanting him to stay. Despite this, he left the creative team for the Tokyo Olympics on July 19, 2021, four days before the opening ceremony.
• Being arrested for possession of cocaine is a big part of why Steven Page left Barenaked Ladies in 2009. Having it happen right before the band was about to play music from their kid's album at several Disney Music Block Party concerts certainly did not help things. (The band canceled the appearances because of this incident.) Page would not perform with the band again until they were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2018.
• The Offspring dismissed drummer Pete Parada in August 2021 after his refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine on his doctor's orders due to him suffering from Guillain-Barré syndrome.
• In 1989, Italian opera singer Luciano Pavarotti's 15-year tenure as a member of the Lyric Opera of Chicago ended after he walked out of the season premiere less than two weeks before rehearsals began. The fact that he canceled 26 out of 41 scheduled appearances at the Lyric over an eight-year period didn't help matters either. However, Pavarotti was still active as a singer and member of the Three Tenors during the last years of his life.
• Death metal band Disma made the mutual decision to let go of their vocalist Craig Pillard in early 2019 after a flier for a racist music festival featuring Sturmfuhrer (Pillard's allegedly defunct martial industrial project with very unambiguously National Socialist lyrical themes) emerged as the latest in a long line of controversies involving Pillard, who had falsely claimed to have renounced his old views a while back but had made it increasingly obvious that he had lied about renouncing them. However, as of 2020, Pillard rejoined Disma on vocals and guitars.
• Indie rock singer Ariel Pink was dropped by record label Mexican Summer after he and fellow musician John Maus were spotted at the January 2021 Washington D.C. protest and Donald Trump rally that culminated in a violent storming of the U.S. Capitol. Pink did not participate in the incident, but his appearance at the rally shocked and angered his fans, and at the same time older pro-Trump and homophobic statements he made also resurfaced.
• John Paul Pitts, frontman for indie rock band Surfer Blood, was arrested for domestic battery in 2012. The news didn't break until several months later (and charges were dropped a year later after he accepted a "plea and pass" deal), but the considerable buzz and hype around the band completely vanished the moment it was made public. Matters weren't helped by an interview with Pitchfork where he made evasive statements about his case. Although they're still kicking around, the sales and popularity of their next three albums failed to match those of their debut, and many fans of indie rock have blacklisted their music altogether.
• Guitarist Ruben Polo stepped down from his role in hardcore punk band Soul Glo in 2022 after his ex-boyfriend accused him of rape by deception.
• Dancehall disc jockey Shabba Ranks's career momentum was abruptly ended in 1993 after his disastrous appearance on a UK music show. During a feud with fellow dancehall musician Buju Banton, Ranks released a single that advocated for the killing of homosexuals with automatic weapons. Soon after this, Ranks was invited onto Channel Four's The Word—just days after winning a Grammy for his album Xtra Naked—but when Ranks attempted to defend his views by claiming that it was "freedom of speech", the crowd audibly booed and host Mark Lamarr responded, "That is absolute crap, and you know it!" Even the co-host and guest Marky Mark, sitting beside Ranks on the couch, looked incredibly uncomfortable while listening to him. The resulting fallout from the appearance caused Ranks' fanbase to splinter, activists to campaign against him, most TV shows to blacklist him, and his ensuing singles to slide down the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. It ended any chance he had of mainstream popularity, and by 1998 he'd stopped producing music stateside altogether. He's still popular in Jamaica (which still abhors homosexuality and therefore didn't see a problem with his comments), but everywhere else considers Ranks persona non grata, and various attempts to mount a comeback since then have been stillborn.
• In October 2014, bassist Robert Reynolds of the country music band The Mavericks was dismissed from the band because of an opiate addiction on Reynolds's part. He has since become a painter and solo artist.
• Gary Richrath's alcoholism led to his 1989 dismissal from REO Speedwagon, under the condition that he could come back when he was truly sober. He released a few solo albums but was able to reunite with them only once, for a 2013 benefit, two years before his death.
• Guitarist Joe Don Rooney quit Rascal Flatts in September 2021 due to his drunk-driving arrest. One month later, the country trio finally broke up after 22 years, cancelling their planned farewell tour that had been delayed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Bassist Andy Rourke's 1986 heroin arrests led to his brief dismissal from The Smiths; Morrissey infamously fired him by leaving a note on his car windshield. He was rehired a month later. His replacement, Craig Gannon, did stay on as rhythm guitarist for the Queen is Dead tour.
• In 2014, AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd was arrested and charged with attempting to procure a murder, threatening to kill, possession of methamphetamine, and possession of cannabis, following a police raid on his home. The band promptly decided to replace Rudd with Chris Slade who played drums with them from 1989 until Rudd's return in 1994, though Rudd would once again return to the band in 2018.
• Sakura, the drummer of L'arc-en-Ciel, was kicked from the band after a drug bust in 1997 that led to threats by the band's label to drop it, as well as enforced boycotts of their work until he was removed.
• Composer Mamoru Samuragochi's career ended abruptly in 2014 after it was publicly revealed that he wasn't deaf and that he used a ghostwriter, Takashi Niigaki, to write his compositions for him. He had his Hiroshima Citizens' Award revoked, recordings of his first symphony were canceled and his Onimusha: Warlords score was replaced in the PS4 remake.
• There are somewhat credible rumors that being caught using hard drugs and/or being The Alcoholic and unable to get it under control, and not Creative Differences alone, was why Taiji Sawada was kicked from X Japan in 1992.
• Rapper Travis Scott was removed from the Coachella 2022 line-up, his CACTI spiked hard seltzer brand was discontinued and Nike delayed their Air Max 1 Cactus Jack shoe collaboration following a crowd crush at Scott's Astroworld Festival in November 2021 during his performance, which led to 10 people dying, many more injured and at least 140 lawsuits being filed for the tragedy.
• Flaming Lips drummer Kliph Scurlock was allegedly kicked out of the group in 2014 for publicly criticizing Christina Fallin, frontwoman for Pink Pony - and daughter of then-Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin - after she donned a Native-American headdress in an ill-conceived publicity photo. Fallin's publicity photo had earned her a lot of criticism, but apparently Lips frontman Wayne Coyne was not among those critics - he posted a photo of three of his friends wearing headdresses, with the explicit caption of "did our best @christinafallin pose."
• By 2019, K-pop idol Seungri, the youngest member of Big Bang, already had a dirty reputation: not only had he been exposed for nonconsensually choking a woman during sex, but he also caused a drunk-driving accident. Both of these incidents, however, were swept under the rug by his company, YG Entertainment, which is well known among the Korean public for its corruption and connections to police and the legal system. These connections have, for years, allowed their artists to get away scot-free for drug-related crimes that average citizens would receive jail time or fines for. But not even they could save him in January 2019 after he was discovered to have been involved in the Burning Sun scandal, a major sex scandal in the Korean entertainment industry that implicated many K-pop idols and celebrities in various crimes taking place at the Burning Sun nightclub (which Seungri was affiliated with). Seungri himself was eventually jailed for prostitution, habitual gambling, drug use, and illegal foreign currency trade. He left the K-pop scene in the wake of the scandal, and the chances of him making a comeback in the industry are next to zero as of 2022.
• Folk singer Michelle Shocked committed career suicide in 2013 by publicly speaking out against same-sex marriage at the Yoshi's nightclub in (of all places) San Francisco, causing the rest of the performance and all other future appearances to be canceled. Shocked had cultivated a sizable following with the LGBT community over the course of her career, support which evaporated overnight when her comments were made public by stunned concertgoers. The controversy was made worse when Shocked attempted to explain the rant... only to have an audio recording of said rant leaked online and completely invalidate her explanation.
• Pop rapper Silentó, who initially gained popularity for his One-Hit Wonder "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)", would later see his career fall to the ground when he was charged with the murder of his cousin in 2021.
• Pedro Silva, who produces music under the name Slime Girls, retired from music in 2020 after allegations of domestic abuse. While his music was still used in OMORI, which was released near the end of that year, he was removed from the official website's devteam roster.
• A 2021 Super Bowl Jeep ad featuring rock musician Bruce Springsteen was pulled after he was arrested on suspicion of DUI in November 2020. Three months later, Springsteen pleaded guilty and was ordered to pay a fine in exchange for the charges being dropped. Fortunately, this proved to be a mere hiccup for Springsteen, as his music career managed to survive with his Broadway residency Springsteen on Broadway returning for a June-September 2021 run.
• YouTube musician Andrew Stein, also known as MandoPony, met this fate in July and August 2020, after accusations came out that he had engaged in pedophilia and grooming, as well as evidence surfacing of him sending nudes to a 17-year old. He was subsequently kicked off from his record label Give Heart Records, and fellow musician Nathan "NateWantsToBattle" Sharp unlisted songs made in collaboration with him from YouTube, such as Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator song "Nothing Remains".
• Civil War's founding guitarist Rikard Sundén was dropped from the band in February 2021 after Swedish authorities charged him on child pornography and child molestation; he was convicted later that year and was replaced by Thobbe Englund.
• Coheed and Cambria bassist Michael Todd left the band in 2011 after being charged with the armed robbery of a pharmacy only a few hours before a show in Massachusetts. Zach Cooper replaced Todd one year later.
• Intronaut and Phobia both fired Danny Walker in 2018 after his girlfriend publicly came forward about the drummer's Domestic Abuse, including photos of a black eye that she had received from him shortly before he had gone out on tour; furthermore, several of his exes came forward to another musician in that circle about their own experiences with his abuse, and he was swiftly ejected from both acts.
• The Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Vogue, Balenciaga, Gap, Adidas, Foot Locker, T.J. Maxx, Sketchers, and other major corporations severed their collaborations, sponsorships and ties with rapper and record producer Kanye West, legally known as Ye, following a series of antisemitic interviews (mostly from right-wing media outlets that he talked with, including the most infamous case in Alex Jones' InfoWars where he talked about liking Adolf Hitler and the Nazis), social media posts, and other wild antics by the guy from early October 2022 onwards. This also led to him no longer being a billionaire in the process.
• Spin Doctors fired founding bassist Mark White in January 2022 because he refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
• British rapper Wiley, a pioneer of the grime genre, made a series of antisemitic posts on social media in July 2020, resulting in him being de-platformed and A-List Management cutting ties with him.
• Sino-Canadian pop star and former EXO member Kris Wu was once one of China's biggest music stars. However, his career came to an end in July 2021 when several allegations came out that he drugged and raped girls, several of whom were underage. As a result, Wu lost multiple endorsement deals, including Porsche and Bulgari, and was arrested on suspicion of rape. Then on November 25, 2022, the Beijing court sentenced him to 13 years in prison followed by deportation back to Canada.
• Yelling At Cats was an early brony musician who specialized at rapping. He became notorious, however, when he made a rap song making thinly veiled threats towards MandoPony (who would later, ironically, meet this fate himself). He allegedly also forced an autistic child to have oral sex with a plushie, flirted with women at Everfree Northwest, and stole money from convention funds. There were petitions to ban him from future conventions, and he essentially disappeared from the Internet.
• Tatsuya Yamaguchi, the founding bassist for the Japanese rock band Tokio, kissed a high school student against her will in February 2018. The student referred the situation to the prosecutors on April 25 and Yamaguchi announced one day later that he would take an indefinite hiatus from the entertainment industry, apologizing for the incident. The victim withdrew her complaint on May 1 and settled with Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi fell on his sword four days later, resigning from Johnny & Associates and leaving Tokio, which led the group to temporarily suspend its musical activity.
• Former 4th-generation Morning Musume member Hitomi Yoshizawa had her contract terminated by UP-FRONT, her current agency after she was involved in a drunken hit-and-run accident that injured two people in September 2018.

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