Morgan Wallen has met the girl of his dreams; He has messed up enough and lost it forever; He’s drowning his sorrows in whiskey; He feels the spark of new love; He vows to change his miserable ways. The 29-year-old Tennessee native’s music portrays life in this never-ending cycle, and at each point along the way, he’s received all kinds of bumper sticker slogans, frat-brotherly advice, and heartfelt apologies to his massive fan base. meets. Lucky for him, these ideas come to him in great, abundant abundance so that all of his albums are incredibly long, resulting in a fat catalog of frothy, familiar country songs like a bursting keg to flood the Billboard charts. spreading like
Following the January 2021 release of his second album, the 30-song Dangerous: The Double Album, Wallen’s ultra-exuberant tactics have been mixed with his raucous, reality-show nostalgia (he was first seen as a contestant on The Voice). found an audience as a result) to cement him as the crossover country star of the young decade. Then a month later he was caught on video using the N-word while stumbling home drunk over the weekend, and that quickly turned into something huge. Despite the public fallout and some short-term repercussions (they were disqualified from the Grammys and put on temporary hiatus by their label), Dangerous became the most commercially successful of the year, tying the record set by Whitney Houston during the Reagan administration. Release made. As of this week, more than two years later, it’s still hanging around the top 5 albums.
Through it all, Wallen’s attitude has been: What’s the least I can do? In quick succession, there was an expected apology tour that included a direct-to-camera vlog posted on Instagram, some talk of charitable donations, an interview on Good Morning America, and a collaboration with Lil Durk. The whole time Wallen seemed mentally exhausted and physically uncomfortable as if the most important lesson he learned from his experience was that a lot of people are watching and it’s best not to make any sudden moves. Lately, what he’s seemed most busy with was an hour-long podcast appearance with his colleague and friend Ernest Keith Smith, where they mostly talked about working and his high school baseball career. When Ernest asks what Wallen did as a teenager to inspire his polarizing reputation on the ballfield, Wallen gives a knowing grin as he chews his schlock: “Just doing what I’d do today.”
Therein lies the key to Wallen’s music. So much of his appeal—and that of any country artist at his level—comes down to convincing the world of his inherent confidence, the uniqueness of his personality, and his reluctance to change. You love them because you know them, and you know them because they know themselves. Merle sang, “I’m so proud of everything I am.” “Blame it all on my roots: I showed up in shoes,” Garth said. “I was around some friends of mine, and we just… we say dumb stuff together… I guess I was just clueless about it,” Wallen defended.
I imagine that Wallen’s importance of only being true to himself was a bold directive to all 49 co-writers on his latest album, One Thing at a Time. This focus group was assembled to produce the truest-to-Valenc reflections of his Tennessee reality and repentant heart – Note to Colleagues: Please keep this part as vague as possible – People in this crazy world all make mistakes. We all make mistakes.
Wallen’s self-knowledge means understanding that no one wants to hear him deal with institutional racism or Southern history and trauma in his music. From the outset, he was drawn to balmy love songs suited to the soothing hum of the car radio or Bluetooth speaker on camping trips; It was his lackluster, sepia-toned worldview that propelled him onto successful singles like “7 Summers”, where qualities like flow and mood were more important than writerly nuance, never real-world commentary. Consider this: The most descriptively complicated song on this record is called “Singler Than She Was,” which is complicated solely by the fact that this girl already has a boyfriend.
And so the word through Nashville is that Wallen needs very catchy, very obscure, very laid-back songs about screwin’ up and making amends. Plus he’s newly cool! Or, at least when he’s on tour. well, mostly. The hired guns trio perform a tune called “Water Into Wine”, which has this poignant lyric: “Baby, I hope you’ll forgive me / I’m drunk till it’s empty, Till kiss me.” The heartfelt “Whiskey Friends” lands on this note of introspection: “Guess I did it again, me and my stupid mouth / I got myself a hole in the wall… and I gotta drink my way out.”
Yes and yes, says Wallen, more like this, please. And so the album feels like five hours of music, all circling the same verse-chorus stereotypes and covering the same thematic territory. I’m very sorry. So much to drink (If you wonder why there’s a song called “Keith Whitley,” close your eyes for five seconds and try to think of a brown drink that’s called the “Miami, My Amy” singer’s last name.) could rhyme with.) “Who do you expect a redneck/Hell, I was born with a beer in my hand,” he sings in the album’s first and best chorus, and it’s a moment of uplift. , not self-pity. He understands their expectations and is grateful to them. This is his comfort zone, his kingdom.
Thirty-six songs are too many. I know it, you know it, and I’m willing to bet Morgan Wallen knows it too. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he doesn’t want anyone to hear this record in its entirety, and the length is less in any particular view than it is to generate as many hits as possible for as long as possible. Still, it is a kind of slogan. There are a few tracks that take a more pared-down approach, with minimal rhythms and acoustic fingerpicking accentuating their gift for delivering drawn, bittersweet pop melodies. There are some couplets that are clever enough to trick you. Meet him at his level and you sometimes remember how he charmed so many listeners in the first place. In “Single Than She Was”, he takes a program of all the things he could do with the girl before her boyfriend arrives, including giving her a taste of her drink and dancing in Semisonic (unless he “Closing Time” by Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen).
Needless to say, none of this is interesting enough to change how you think of Morgan Wallen, let alone any goodwill you may have gained from her New Yorker interview days. Not to mention, he seems to have lost a great deal of energy as a singer and performer, leading to a ton of uninspired retreads and some truly generic filler. (Do you think his backing band even remembers cooking up the microwaved Southern rock of “Last Drive Down Men”?) Even the album’s title acknowledges that Wallen considers it a transitional moment. According to The Voice, he knows it’s up to the audience to decide what happens next. From the sounds of it, this lack of agency comes as a relief. And with the continued success of silent singles like “Last Night” (imagine: the acoustic Chainsmokers) and “You Proof” (as in “I Need Something That’s Proof You”), you can see why he’s not sweating it. Is.
In that same conversation with Ernest, Wallen comes as close as he gets to acknowledging the dire consequences of repeated bad behavior. It comes in the form of a parable about his childhood dog, a white German Shepherd, who disappeared after developing a habit of terrorizing chickens at a nearby farm. “I think I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to it,” he says, rolling his eyes. The first time the dog came home covered in blood and feathers, the neighbors let him off with a warning. “Just don’t let it happen again.” A few days later, when it happened again, he sent his dog to “Papaw’s farm” where, after tasting blood, he promptly killed another dog. And then? “I think I know what happened to that dog,” Ernest interjects in a rapid glee. Wallen raises the bottle to his lips and spits and shrugs to signal the end of the story.