The Case for Morgan Wallen
The songs, the scandals and the appeal of pop-country's most polarizing superstar
We promised Sonic Pit would be a potpourri, so here we go:
Let’s talk Morgan Wallen.
Did I wanna like him?
Not particularly.
Well all know the baggage that comes with him.
I didn’t pay much attention to Morgan Wallen until one afternoon during the dark days of Covid in February 2021 when I clicked on the Bob Lefsetz newsletter. (That’s always an adventure.)
“So Wallen,” the music industry vet wrote, “is the best thing to happen to country music since Chis Stapleton because his music is more authentic than what Nashville has been selling.”
Yeah?
“Nashville has been pandering for years,” Lefsetz continued. “Talking about trucks, family and babies. As if no one involved ever swore or crossed the line. Instead of homogenizing himself for the radio, Wallen sounds like he’s from the country, he’s got a twang, he’s closer to the roots of the music than anybody presently on the airwaves.”
No way.
I went to Wallen’s Spotify page fully prepared to roll my eyes in Lefsetz’s direction — like when he uses “but” two or three times in one sentence
The first words out of Wallen’s mouth were “Poor me…Pour me another drink.”
OK, that was good. I thought we were doing a poor, poor, pitiful me thing. We weren’t.
Warren Zevon would have approved. Maybe even Elvis Costello.
That’s the opening of “Whiskey Glasses,” a song that now exceeds 1 billion streams on Spotify, as it best captures one of Wallen’s top themes – covering up heartbreak with whiskey.
Then, on to “Dangerous.” Started with “Sand in My Boots.” Geeze, this was good. Detail in the writing, grit in the vocal, great melody and storytelling. Then, “Wasted on You.” A trap beat, more heartbreak, more grit, like he’s got a wad in his mouth.
“All of this time/and all of this money/All of these sorrys I don’t owe you, honey/All of these miles on this Chevy and prayers in a pew/All them days I spent wasted on you.”
Whoa. This line could have been on “Blood on the Tracks” – without the makes and models. Wallen was taking me somewhere I don’t go — to Friday nights in Southern dive bars, to backroad tailgates. I get why some of you don’t wanna go there, but I’m interested. I’m the furthest thing from a redneck, but I can LARP as one.
On “Still Goin’ Down,” he rattled off this:
“Cause I’m from a small town, southern drawl crowd
We’re sippin’ clear, drinkin’ beer on a Friday night
Every country girl got on her cutoffs
Shakin’ her hips, take a trip, buddy, tell me I’m a liar
Still circle up big trucks around a fire
Still kickin’ up some dust behind the tires
Call it cliché, but hey, just take it from me
It’s still goin’ down out in the country.”
Cool internal rhyme pattern and that nod to it being a cliche, that’s a winner. Wallen does that turn a lot.
“Dangerous” goes on for 30 tracks. Nobody puts out 30 great tracks. Somehow, Wallen comes remarkably close There are ballads sweet and tearful, beautifully written songs to his hometown and his mom, a cover of Jason Isbell’s “Cover Me Up” that almost matches the original, and absolute bangers, like “Country A$$ Shit,” “This Bar” (shades of U2 in there) and “Beer Don’t.”
“Beer don’t bust its ass Monday to Friday
Beer don’t wanna sit in a glass, so slide it my way
We might drink way too many of ‘em at the bar
People got their own opinion about how redneck we are
But beer don’t…”
That might be the best beer song since Toby and Willie did “Beer for My Horses.”
The stunning album closer, “Silverado for Sale,” finds a young man devastated to be parting with his truck, the one mentioned in the first song, but the money’s going toward a good place: an engagement ring and a hopeful future. “Money’s kinda tight but love don’t care.”
***
“Dangerous” hit in the midst of a scandal in January 2021.
Racial slurs are inexcusable but sometimes – bear with me – context matters.
Wallen is a singer, a onetime “The Voice” contestant, who grew up on country, hard rock, Southern rock and hip-hop. In another era, he might not be country. So, he’s on a 72-hour bender – thoroughly believable given the songs – a combination of drunk and hungover, and he tosses the n-word-with-an-a in a friend group.
This is what he said: “make sure this [n-word] gets home safe.”
We have no idea if it was an inside joke, or what the context was, but it wasn’t him screaming the word at a stranger across a parking lot. It isn’t even talked about anymore. A neighbor catches it on camera and on Feb. 3, 2021, he’s suspended from his label, Big Loud Records, his music is pulled by radio stations and streaming services, and the Academy of Country Music declares him award-ineligible.
Wallen makes an earnest apology promising to do better, and later comes off as a real dude in a “Good Morning America” with Michael Strahan where he talks about giving $500,000 to black charities.
The scandal didn’t stop “Dangerous,” not because country fans wanted to get behind a “racist” – those people fade quickly – but because the songs were so damned good.
“Dangerous” wasn’t just the biggest-selling of the year. It became the first album in history to spend 100 weeks in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200. It has now sold 13.9 million equivalent album units.
(Side note: I learned in 1985 when I finally gave in and saw “Back to the Future” that when a lot of people like something, there’s usually a reason.)
Along the way, hip-hop artists have had his back. He hooked up with Lil Durk for “Stand By Me” and the banger “Broadways,” with Moneybagg Yo for “Whiskey Whiskey” and Lil Wayne and Rick Ross for “Miami. Wiz Khalifa came out for a “Black and Yellow” cameo with him in 2024 at PNC Park. He’s also done his walkouts with the likes of Drake, Mike Tyson, Patrick Mahomes, Myles Garrett and Barry Bonds.
***
Here’s what he’s done since “Dangerous”: 73 more songs across “One Thing at Time” (2023) and “I’m the Problem” (2025).
“One Thing at a Time” charted five Billboard Hot 100 singles, including “Last Night,” the biggest single of the year.
“No way it was our last night I kissed your lips
Make you grip the sheets with your fingertips
Last bottle of Jack, we split a fifth
Just talkin’ ‘bout life, goin’ sip for sip
Yeah, you, you know you love to fight
And I say shit I don’t mean
But I’m still gon’ wake up wantin’ you and me”
That’s real shit. You either relate to that or you want to see that movie play out.
All 36 tracks from “One Thing at a Time” charted simultaneously, topping Drake’s record. On one of the best songs, “I Wrote the Book,” Wallen struggles with his faith, another common theme:
“But there’s one that lays by the lamp on the nightstand
One that says don’t cuss and don’t fight
Or let the bottle turn you into a different man
But damn if I don’t do it every Friday night
Those get-you-into-Heaven letters in red
Ain’t gettin’ read enough to keep me on a straight line
I’m a Jack of all trades, but man I gotta say
That’s one book I didn’t write”
The cover of the latest, fourth album, “I’m the Problem,” is the courtroom sketch of Wallen facing his charge of throwing a chair off the roof of Chief’s, the Nashville bar co-owned by Eric Church.
It almost landed on a cop. Thank god no one was hurt. Wallen’s an idiot for that one, knows it and hopefully won’t do anything like that again.
The single “Superman,” directed at his now 5-year-old son Indigo, opens:
“One day, you’re gonna see my mugshot
From a night when I got a little too drunk
Hear a song about a girl that I lost
From the times when I just wouldn’t grow up.”
If we were to make a Springsteen comparison, “I’m the Problem” is the “Darkness on the Edge of Town” to “Dangerous’” “Born to Run.” Some of the youthful innocence is gone, replaced by a struggle with the accountability of adulthood.
On the alcohol-soaked title track, he sings, “You hate that when you look at me, you halfway see yourself/And it got me thinkin’/If I’m the problem/You might be the reason.”
Elsewhere, listen to freakin’ notes he hits on “Smile,” one of the most painful songs on the album.
Over at NPR, Ann Powers, who’s way smarter than me (but a little lamer?), is grappling with warming up to Wallen. She writes that she purposefully avoided until last year when “I Had Some Help” blew up the radio. The Post Malone collab is another song about whiskey being a shared problem in a relationship/
“What’s interesting to me,” Powers writes, “is the unspoken agreement running through coverage of ‘I’m the Problem’: that it’s time to treat him as a typical pop star slowly shedding his baggage, instead of a pariah.”
She makes a lot of profound points that they don’t make in Country Music Weekly, like comparing Wallen to Drake and The Wkend, for how “he articulates the grievances held by men of his generation, but he also accepts his role as the object of women’s grievances.”
Noting that he’s locked in both country and Taylor Swift fans, she writes that his “don’t-call-it-love songs resonate in an era of hookup culture…expressing tenderness and cynicism in the same breath.”
Ambivalence can make for good art.
Powers uses a Boss comparison herself, addressing the smattering of songs on “I’m the Problem” that venture into social issues – the death of small towns, the divide between rich and poor – one of them being “Working Man’s Song.”
Ultimately, she withholds her stamp of approval, determining that by not mentioning “shrinking social services,” Morgan Wallen is just not progressive enough.
He does tell us all the time that he’s just a “redneck” from Tennessee, not a liberal from NYC. He’s also been a little too busy in six years creating 100-plus songs to be listening to NPR.
His run of success continues with what will be a sold-out weekend at Acrisure Stadium.
Somewhere down the road, there could be another controversy, another apology, another reinvention and, hopefully, more albums with 30 songs. Because for all his flaws, Morgan Wallen keeps taking listeners somewhere they recognize, even if they’ve never been there before.
The shows are at 5:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. There are limited tickets left.