Har Mar Superstar issues both denial and apology after being accused of sexual assault
Music Features Sexual assault
[Note: This article contains descriptions of sexual assault.]
In a piece published today by Minnesota’s Star Tribune, and in a social media statement penned by multiple “survivors and allies,” musician Sean Tillman—best known for performing as Har Mar Superstar—has been accused of sexually inappropriate behavior and comments. The Tribune piece also outlines several incidents of alleged assault, including one in which Tillman followed a woman into a bathroom and forcibly kissed her, another in which he exposed himself and shoved his penis into a woman’s face, and a third in which he shoved his hands into a woman’s pants. The majority of the women alleging these incidents have remained anonymous at this time, but the social media statement makes it clear that “The assaults experienced by 7 survivors that have shared thus far have ranged from pointed inappropriate sexual comments and grooming to physical sexual assault.”
Tillman has responded to the allegations, issuing a statement in which he denied the details of one specific incident—which, per the Tribune, took place in 2016 and sparked multiple other women coming forward—while issuing a blanket apology to the “brave women” who have been “coming forward to speak about how I treated them, including conduct that was harmful, abusive and selfish.” Although careful not to blame drugs and alcohol for his behavior, Tillman casts his struggles with substance abuse as a contributing factor to his behavior toward women in the period described. Outside the 2016 incident, which he says “just didn’t happen that way,” Tillman’s statement avoids directly addressing any of the other allegations against him.
The Minneapolis music community, where Tillman came up before achieving more global success, has already begun taking action in regards to the accusations against him. Per the Tribune, the city’s First Avenue nightclub has cut plans to sell tickets for an upcoming show by Tillman’s band Heart Bones, and local radio station 89.3 The Current has pulled his music from rotation.
64 Comments
Seems to me “that’s not how it happened” and “I was abusing substances” are mutually exclusive statements. If one is in an altered mental state where memories may not be entirely clear — or even missing — there is no way one can be certain what happened at the events in question.
Trusting him is like trusting the Georgia shooter who claims he isn’t racist; maybe not the best source of info on his own line of thinking considering what occurred.
The guy who’s doing the thinking is not the best source of info on his own mind? GTFOH with that
“I didn’t do it, but if I did, I was high/drunk/mentally ill” is a tried-and-true defense of the guilty.
It’s a classic defense, but nowhere near as brave as “that sweaty monster assaulting children wasn’t me, due to my temporary incapability to sweat, that actually went away before this interview”.
That statement reads like it was done by professionals – reminds me of Rachael the Bachelor Plantation Party Lady’s statement. Very carefully worded to hit all the touchpoints – listening, not being entitled, centering victims, blah blah blah. (Hers was even more boilerplate. No single human mind could craft a statement like that. Especially the line “I am ashamed about my lack of education, but it is no-one’s responsibility to educate me”. Come on.)
Really feels like PR firms are offering this as a service now. So Your Past Has Caught Up With You, Take Control of the Social Media Narrative Before it Takes Control of You etc.
I wonder how much it costs?
I realize that I am old and not in touch with today’s popular culture, so the comment “I’ve never heard of this guy” really isn’t that constructive. Instead, could the people familiar with Har Mar Superstar help me out by giving me some indicators of his fame level: How many copies do his most popular albums sell? What size club can he headline? What is the highest his songs have charted? Like, is he “multi-platinum, stadium-packing, multi-number one hits” popular with kids today? Or “a guy selling CDs from the trunk of his car” level? I’m honestly curious. I’m just trying to get my bearings.
Like quite well known in the indie scene, popular with comedians and runs in some of those circles. Has small roles/cameos in a few movies and sitcoms and was the band leader on the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 reboot, if that gives any indication of the guy’s level of fame.
MST3K is the only place I know him from.
He is not new or specific to “today’s popular culture.” I saw him open for the Strokes at the Aragon Ballroom (about 5k seat venue in Chicago) when I was in college, which was back when the Strokes were an exciting new beat combo, shortly after the turn of the century. All I remember about the show is that the sound in the Aragon was awful. I do not think Har Mar Superstar has ever been much more famous than “recognizable opener for a very popular band” level famous.
I’m a huge fan of his work and his schtick is like Leisure Suit Larry I guess. Like allegedly he strips either to his boxers or naked at the end of every of his live shows and stuff.
I actually really appreciate that you didn’t do the “who is ___(arcade fire)?” Har Mar was pretty big in indie a decade ago, he had a song called “Power Lunch” that was a real jam and popped up in TV shows and things. There were a lot of chubby sweaty sexy types for a second there like the lead singer of Les Savy Fav. Beth Ditto sang on Power Lunch and she’s cool so you know he wasn’t considered toxic back in the day (man the commenters on this site were really terrible about Beth Ditto). He wasn’t really innovative and kind of faded away, so this isn’t as big an artistic loss as Ariel Pink or Mark Kozelek both of which being monsters are real bummers. Somethingsomethingwhitemaleentitlement is actually really appropriate in these cases, these guys never expected to be called to account.
He opened for The Hold Steady when they were touring “Boys and Girls in America”. Presumably because they both came from the Minneapolis scene. I don’t remember much about his perfromance from back then, either. The next time I heard about him was in the new MST3K.
His most popular song on Spotify has 5m streams, which indicates an okay indie following. His music is super derivative though, absolutely nothing new there.
I mean unless you’re ancient, ancient he’s been around since 1999. He’s not anybody new. I, myself, know his name but never heard anything he does but he’s been around a long while.
fwiw, a sorta old US person, I only heard of him from an appearance or two from Nevermind the Buzzcocks.
Yah, other than MST3K, I know he’s been on Doug Loves Movies before. So game shows.
He would typically headline 300-ish seat indie/punk clubs in most markets. He probably took home $1000-$2000 a gig.
Thanks, this is a useful barometric for me. I have a decent sense of the type of acts that headline 300-seat clubs. I appreciate the info.
He’s kind of an ironic hipster in-joke act but musically he was pretty competent. The fat guy who looks like a porn star aspect apparently made him palatable for people who would not regularly dig mainstream ‘90s R & B dance music.
Roger that. “He’s kind of an ironic hipster in-joke act” will help explain why he never popped up on my radar. That’s well outside my zone.
He is without question the most famous musician named after a mall, if that helps.
I became aware of him from AV Undercover and then recognized him in the Doomtree music video…that’s it. Near 10 years ago.
Not to detract from this, as this is obviously just as important, but nothing about the allegations against Mark Kozelek? You’ve reviewed his albums and interviewed him on this site. Seems irresponsible to stay silent.
Just hit the wire a day or two ago. Give it a bit.
i mean, the NEW allegations did, but this isnt newhttps://www.npr.org/2020/08/13/902278523/mark-kozelek-of-sun-kil-moon-an-red-house-painters-accused-of-sexual-misconduct
My mistake!
I mean, allegations against Kozelek have been coming up since last August.
Exactly. And nothing on this site since then. I checked.
I mean, I take no pleasure in pointing this out. I was a fan.
Yeah, I didn’t mean to excuse the AV Club for not posting about it yet. More of a grim observation that there’s probably more coming so they might as well put it in one package.And yeah, same. Birds of Flims is one of my favorite tracks ever, but I don’t think I can listen to it anymore, especially since at least one line there no longer sounds like an ironic humblebrag.
You can say that about a lot of his lines now, I think.For someone who is often assumed to be very truthful, there sure are a lot of lies by omission.It goes without saying that I feel very bad for the victims. It’s just not what you’d generally expect from a guy who writes and sings like he does, and that makes it so much more devious. He exploited (and schemingly encouraged) the assumption that he would value and respect boundaries. It’s really quite shocking.
To be fair, some writing was on the wall. The way he treated Laura Snapes should have been a major red flag.Hell, I saw Sun Kil Moon live once and Kozelek was acting like a real prick – he wasn’t passive aggressive or stern like some artists who dislike audience participation or photographers, just straight up insults. From what I read, that sort of behavior wasn’t uncommon.None of this equate sexual harrassment – but it’s clear he’s got a very fragile ego.
Yeah that’s true. Publicly he’s long been dancing on Asshole Beach treading the waters of Straight Up Evil.I must admit that I’d been suppressing having read quite a few of those stories up until now.
I can relate. I went through this with Louis CK – the rumors were around a long time, but it was easy to put them in the back of one’s head. Then I just felt fucking duped.
I’ll honestly admit that the louis ck stuff was super hard to process. Not that I ever doubted anything of course, but more that I loved so much of the show and it can sometimes be hard to step away from that sort of emotional connection. His in the woods two-parter, the letterman trilogy, and the Christmas episode about his daughters were some of my favorite television ever made, but needless to say – I’ve no desire to ever revisit any of that stuff. Definitely not.
After he called the War on Drugs beer commercial rock I decided he was a piece of shit.
Someone told me many years ago that Kozelek gave her friend herpes.
Oral (HSV-1) or genital herpes (HSV-2)? Two thirds of the world have the former (most being asymptomatic), 11% have the latter (and again most of them don’t know, according to the WHO. They also say only 10–20% of people who have HSV-2 report receiving a diagnosis of genital herpes.).
Ugh, apparently editing a post on Kinja to add a hyperlink moves the hyperlinked part to the beginning of the post.
It was the Robin Williams kind
I imagine a lot of that has to do with the fact that everyone stopped paying attention to anything Mark does once he started that project where he does improvised word salad over lite-jazz.
If there’s one thing I want from the A.V. Club, it’s a sex offender registry.
You must be aware that the point you’re making here is fairly reductive.
What was your point? Why isn’t my favourite website covering this sex offender news?
No.
Just learning that there’s new allegations about Kozelek. And he’s doubling down on that bullshit that these are all false and there’s an agenda behind it, like there’s anything outlandish about the allegations. I work in music and I can confirm shit like this happens all the time – I decided to retire from performing live about six years ago mostly because of all the stuff I’ve seen and never had the guts to speak up about – but it’s not like only people in the business know this. Dear lord, what a miserable fuck. Like he’s so important that people want to ruin his career just because. Fuck this shit stain.
I’m not sure they are obligated, per se, but I think it is directly part of what AV Club should do especially for a musician they used to praise regularly (I think somebody here called him the greatest living songwriter…before he started dad rapping). I had an imaginary vision in my head that something happened to him, like a brain injury, a little after Benji blew up…he started being really coarse about women and talking about “getting pussy” onstage, it was really revolting. But the Pitchfork article verifies very consistent awful behavior way back to the mid 90s (forcing witnessed masturbation, claiming he wasn’t interested in somebody sexually then putting them in terrible situations) and consistent accounts since then (repeatedly basically accusing women of agism for not wanting to have sex with him). I was hoping I could do that thing like with Michael Jackson’s first three albums where you can at least partly assume he hadn’t done any of the terrible stuff yet. But, alas, Ghosts of the Great Highway is now deleted.
Hold your horses. There are so many people to cancel, and they will all be cancelled in time.
Haha…no shit the boner who pulls out his pubes and throws them at the audience is accused of sexual assault. Surprised it took this long.
Har Har Former Star.
I mean, that gives him too much credit. With a stupid name like that, he wasn’t going anywhere.
He’s named after a mall!
lame
Yeah I was gonna say, he isn’t really a star to start.
Ron Jeremy cosplayer ALSO a piece of shit
There are times when I hear news like this and say “Really?! No him!” This is not one of those times.
The first poster beat me to it, but I’m gonna say it regardless. I’m not gonna be that guy that says Who Da Fuck? But I am. The 90’s-early 00’s were my period of indie music and everything, literally everything else. I’m pretty sure that if you’re an asshole on stage (seriously, your schtick is stripping?) you’re probably an asshole in real life too.
Dang, what a coincidence that so many women are both brave and, apparently, liars!
Apologial? Denilogy?
I thought this was going to be some kind of Jon Lovitz gag, but no, that is a real person apparently.
not condoning violence, but most women I’ve dated would level this schmo. He looks like Shakes the Clown’s wimpy brother.
I’m a fan of his work but like this is the musical equivalent of Joey Ryan y’know? Like the guy who’s gimmick is of a sexual pest is in fact a sexual pest? No doubt hombres.
DO SOMETHING!!!
This is one person who I’ve heard of a lot or seen his name a lot and know he must be pretty famous but I’ve never ever seen a single second of what he does.
I personally have experienced his harassment. He’s a real pile of shit. SOOOOOOOOOOOO unbelievably arrogant.