morgan wallen

double album dropping this week -- who else is excited?

"7 summers" & "somebody's problem" are two of my fav songs of 2020, and the jason isbell cover and "more than my hometown" are also great. going back to the last album, "chasin you" & "whiskey glasses" are classics to me.

piece on him by kelefa sanneh in the new yorker recently

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/28/how-morgan-wallen-became-the-most-wanted-man-in-country

30 songs seems like a lot! have you heard it? is it mostly/all good?

i haven't heard it! easily one of my most anticipated albums of the year tho

30 songs is def crazy, i'm sure they know it will help him stream. you can tell just looking at the tracklist that it's pretty ridiculous ("country ass shit" -> "whatcha think of country now" -> "me on whiskey" -> "need a boat" lol) & the sanneh story backs that up. i'm not really complaining tho. it does seem like the first record is better & more what i'm into of his, the stuff that has a bit of a softer touch.

thinkin bout them tan lines, and i'm thinkin damn i'd
love to drown in them heartbreaker blue eyes

this is my fav lyric of the year

i'm a dinosaur who looks at an album as a whole, whereas 30 tracks will help his streaming #s and ppl will just put the songs they wanna hear on playlists anyway.

i like all the singles, looking forward to listening to Dangerous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpFuqF4ASXA

fuck me up

banger

i'm pretty happy w/ how this album turned out ... the second disc is more tuneful than i would've guessed, stuff like the title track, "rednecks, red letters, red dirt." some of the melodies on that side are actually a bit more developed than on the first disc. the first disc really has some knockouts tho... "sand in my boots," "865,"... "whiskey'd my way" especially.

he has this incredible knack for writing songs that are easy to memorize... his choruses are often verbose but simple, economical in their own ways. "somebody's problem", "whiskey'd my way" ... i was able to sing these entire songs back from memory after listening for less than an hour... even going back to "chasin you," the way that chorus unfolds, same with "7 summers"... it keeps unspooling the imagery in a way that is efficient but also generous

and then lyrically there's these bits in his songs that feel as if the tropes are being examined w/ fresh eyes... the "heartbreaker blue eyes" line in "somebody's problem", or in "sand in my boots" when he sings about dodging potholes in his "sunburnt silverado." he has this goofy meatheady public persona but his music is overall very romantic and often intelligently written (save the song on here about buying a harvard sweatshirt from goodwill and ppl then assuming he's smart)

looks like he partied too hard during a pandemic again: https://www.tmz.com/2021/02/02/morgan-wallen-n-word-nashville-neighbors/

i listened to this a few times last weekend while working around the house.

no surprise, there is a very good 12- or maybe 15-track album to be found within the sprawl of Dangerous.

but ... given this most recent news, this seems to be a very clear "there are plenty of country singers to listen to besides this guy" situation.

i don't know if this lines up w/ what j0rdan was saying (i think it does), but dude definitely has a way of making choruses (and even verses) that feel like they shouldn't work because they're crammed with way too much stuff ... work

and yes, i was humming 865, 7 summers, somebody's problem, etc., the next day

Yeah well

Morgan Wallen's recording contract is suspended, dropped from country radio after using racial slur https://t.co/XvgxJ6vVSg

— Tennessean (@Tennessean) February 3, 2021

I have no opinion on his music, haven't heard anything beyond the just okay songs he did on SNL, but he seems to be extremely good at shooting himself in the foot.

As a resident of East Tennessee (area code 865) let me say how deeply unsurprising all of this is.

I dunno, I'm a little surprised to see country radio making a quick response like this. Can't say I expected that to happen.

One legacy of the George Floyd protests, I think corporations have learned to move fast on that stuff.

But by unsurprising I meant the behavior rather than the response, to be clear.

Oh, yeah, I was just trying to look a the bright side of him seeing some swift consequences. Given country radios', uh, problematic past, I don't know that something like this was guaranteed.

it puts country as a community and genre (in a business sense) in a very tough place bcuz he's easily the biggest new country star in what... a decade? since taylor swift? they can suspend him or put him off radio for the time being but his enormous fanbase is not going to walk away from him, i assume most will actually rally around him, talk about cancel culture, urge forgiveness etc

he has 11 songs or something on the hot 100 right now like he's travis scott... streaming is a double edged sword in these scenarios bcuz the process is so democratized that labels only have so much control over the flow of music now. 6ix9ine and tory lanez are gross problematic pariahs who to different degrees have been blackballed from the major label industry but who have no problem finding and cultivating large audiences on streaming... morgan isn't going to drive attention in a trollish aspect the way those guys go but you can't shut off the tap when it comes to streaming

damn the way that rolled off his tongue you can tell it's an everyday thing

I don't expect any of these bans to last too long, but he's going to have to do ... something, I don't know what, but more than just an apology. And he'll need to disown or keep at bay fans wanting to use him as a "cancel culture" poster child.

he's shown absolutely no reason to have any faith in him

Probably just team up with Luke Combs for a duet and call it done.

I quite dig the album, and it's fun to dip around in like any double or triple thing, and what he said should surprise no one.

Guess corporate America's seen the PR possibilities in #woke

Wallen’s behavior is disgusting and horrifying. I think this is an opportunity for the country music industry to give that spot to somebody who deserves it, and there are lots of black artists who deserve it. https://t.co/14B77zLgMR

— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) February 3, 2021

This doesn't belong here, but it's good news: TJ Osbourne of the Brothers Osbourne came out today.

*Osborne

Guess corporate America's seen the PR possibilities in #woke

this seems startlingly cynical to me. what do you think they should have done (if anything)?

guy shoulda been dumped from the industry after he was caught partying during a pandemic (and yes i'm aware that other artists i'm a fan of have probably been partying it up too)

this seems startlingly cynical to me. what do you think they should have done (if anything)?

― excuse me while I fold my pants (morrisp)

Exactly what they did today. As Murgatroid said, though, they should've done so last winter after the mask-free partying.

Isbell saying that is also notable because IIRC Wallen covered a song of his on the new album.

Gotcha. I see the partying as different from this.

For Nashville, maybe in 2021 the politics of masking is too hot to touch.

i don't think someone should have their career ruined for flouting covid guidelines.

not that i defend partying during covid. but i think it's a different category of offense than this.

Yeah, that partying was dumb, but not losing your career worthy imho. But that doesn't matter because he's since proved that was only the tip of his own dumbfuck iceberg.

idk potentially killing others (even indirectly but when the alternative, staying the fuck home, is the easiest thing to a successful musician) seems like a career-losing offence to me!

i just noticed he's "suspended indefinitely" from his label....which is not the same thing as "dropped"

speaking of cynical

idk potentially killing others (even indirectly but when the alternative, staying the fuck home, is the easiest thing to a successful musician) seems like a career-losing offence to me!

drunk driving obviously isn't, historically

yeah, i thought that was a suspect move by Big Loud. they wanna wait for this to blow over.

i have only read a couple links but i still don't understand what 'suspending' his contract really means

i'm not sure i agree w/ the suggestion that the audience that delivers him his superlative streaming numbers wouldn't also be put off by this incident. given that his project just came out recently, i guess we'll see! frankly, the streaming ecosystem is not really that democratized, and yeah while there was a contingent of folks who felt weirdly energized to stick up for tory lanez after that whole saga, it frankly... didn't really help him commercially? like, yes, the fact that he was getting on the hot 100 at all was good by his standards, but none of his entries since the incident has lasted more than two weeks -- i strongly doubt he'll ever have a real hit again. similarly, save for "gooba" (briefly) 6ix9ine has also been on a precipitous decline and will also probably never have a hit again.

morgan wallen is a major star in country right now, easily on the level of like luke bryan a decade ago, but he's also come along at just the right time to benefit from a major surge in streaming usage among the country audience as more listeners have adopted services like amazon and apple music in recent years. country singles are charting better pretty much across the board over the past ~2 years as a result, so he is hardly the only artist to be benefiting from this wave. luke combs, to name one obvious example, is basically at his heels commercially. there will be other huge stars sooner than one might expect. is he really that unique? i personally don't think so, tho i haven't gone deep on his catalog and probably never will.

if this nips his career in the bud, i don't think it will hurt the label system much. some fans will be spurred to defend him or clamor for some kind of reconciliation, but many are already repulsed. the country audience isn't quite as hard-right as people sometimes presume.

you're focusing too much on singles and the hot 100. tory lanez's album is in the top 100 on apple music a month after its release w/ not just no label backing but a complete promotional blackout on all streaming services. there might be like 2 or 3 indie albums in the country doing better than it right now. the hot 100 is harder to crack for a variety of reasons, but outside of like idk the 50 most successful songs in a given year, an album that streams well matters more (in a dollars sense) than a song that streams well. it's a quantity game and tory lanez is making a lot of money w/ no label skimming off the top of his streams. morgan wallen will have to fall very far for his album to not be highly profitable for him & the label. outside of rap and a few pop acts, he's in his own stratosphere of streaming. luke combs is only at his heels commercially in a superficial sense... from billboard:

Dangerous' 265,000 opening-week units, streaming equivalent albums (SEA) comprise 184,000, equaling 240.2 million on-demand streams of the album's songs; album sales contribute 74,000; and track equivalent albums (TEA) equal 7,000. The set scores the largest streaming week ever for a country album, more than doubling the 102.3 million streams achieved by Luke Combs' What You See Is What You Get (Nov. 7, 2020).

it's not slighting country fans to say that most of this guy's enormous audience is going to stick by him through this controversy and/or accept his reconciliation and subsequent comeback. that's pretty much the entire history of fandom

He'll probably try to go to rehab and hope people are dumb enough to believe that alcohol makes you racist.

Just because he's one of the more vocal:

And yes, alcohol doesn’t make you use that word. They don’t actually put Jack Daniel’s blood in it

— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) February 4, 2021

Looking at Twitter....yeah...he's gonna be fine

If Ariel Pink can get a sympathetic ear from Fucker Carlson I’m sure this clown can too

Imagine what a absolutely shitty neighbor Morgan Wallen must be if someone on his street took the effort to examine their Ring footage, download it and then send it to TMZ

Now dropped by his agency (WME).

Yeah the whole busted-by-Ring aspect of this is very Black Mirror.

The surveillance state is woke

I dgaf about this stupid Morgan Waller guy but when Isbell inevitably has his own caught-on-tape moment I'm gonna laugh so hard

really

Wtf

fuck off

BMI apparently thinks BeBe Winans has nothing more important to do than go counsel this shit-kicking hick about his public image.

BMI, the music rights management organization, says it can’t kick Morgan Wallen from its ranks, but has asked the iconic gospel singer BeBe Winans to educate the disgraced country music singer-songwriter about being a more “empathetic person” https://t.co/vgRbq4mkO1

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) February 4, 2021

i was worried things like that were gonna happen but i figured it'd be one of the small number of black stars in contemporary country who'd be enlisted

BMI also removed Wallen’s photo from its Twitter page this afternoon, going from this…

…to this:

The artists got whiter tho(?!)

I don't believe there's any precedent for revoking someone's membership in a performing rights organization for something like this. I mean Phil Spector and Jim Gordon were/are both still BMI members.

Is this the first time someone was cancelled while they had the number one album?

Billboard reports that his latest album sold 25,000 copies during the week ending Feb. 4, an increase of 102%, according to MRC Data. Billboard reported that that the album’s streaming numbers slightly increased by 3%, representing roughly 160 million on-demand streams. Song downloads from the album also went up by 67%.

From an AP news article. His sales and streams increased when this news came out

if this nips his career in the bud, i don't think it will hurt the label system much. some fans will be spurred to defend him or clamor for some kind of reconciliation, but many are already repulsed. the country audience isn't quite as hard-right as people sometimes presume.

― dyl, Thursday, February 4, 2021 12:16 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

keep trying to square this with all the country music fans i grew up with and what they post on facebook, but the numbers seem to back up my instincts

I would wager that the great, great majority of people on both the left and the right don't even have the "can I still support this artist" argument with themselves and just like what they like

^^^ largely OTM

So... A portion of this money goes to me, since I wrote ‘Cover Me Up.’ I’ve decided to donate everything I’ve made so far from this album to the Nashville chapter of the @NAACP. Thanks for helping out a good cause, folks. https://t.co/Ch3FlDBmJf

— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) February 10, 2021

Good on Isbell, seems like the right thing to do in this case. Just don’t tell Paul Ponzi.

Pledged to donate $500,000 but Rolling Stone can’t find evidence he donated that much:

Nearly eight weeks after making these comments, however, it remains unclear if Wallen actually donated the entire amount he said he would. In a statement to Rolling Stone, BMAC — the only organization Wallen mentioned by name in his GMA interview — criticized the singer, saying they were “disappointed that Morgan has not used his platform to support any anti-racism endeavors.” While the group received some money from Wallen, they said the $500,000 number “seems exceptionally misleading.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/morgan-wallen-charity-1209084/

Yikes:

Lil Durk releases the video to his single “Broadway Girls” featuring Morgan Wallen.
pic.twitter.com/w6P0d7uZKc

— Rap Alert (@rapalert4) December 20, 2021

"Eminem featuring Elton John" - 2021

It's got the same ominous trap/twang as "Old Town Road" and unfortunately is stuck in my head after a few listens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpz4Ro5iD1Q

Billboard Hot 100: #14(new) Broadway Girls, @lildurk Feat. @MorganWallen.

— chart data (@chartdata) December 28, 2021

Last night @opry you had a choice- either upset one guy and his “team,” or break the hearts of a legion of aspiring Black country artists. You chose wrong and I’m real sad for a lot of my friends today. Not surprised though. Just sad.

— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) January 9, 2022

Wait so looking through the replies on that, someone is saying that "all about the Benjamins" is an anti-Semitic slur?

Has that always been a thing or is this new? I don't remember ever hearing or seeing anything tied to that phrase that was claimed to be anti-Semitic (aside from recent political posturing against Ilhan Omar but I tied that to her criticizing Israel by invoking a money stereotype rather than the specifics of using the term "Benjamins" to reference $100 bills)

I genuinely haven't heard that take until just now, be curious to know if this was a more widespread reading.

It does seem sprung from the Fox/etc coverage of Omar's tweet. Otherwise it's Ben Franklin 100%.

Never thought about it at all, but don't know the lyrics so looked it up and there's a line "You should do what we do, stack chips like Hebrews." Maybe that's what people mean? Apparently "Hebrews" has been (or is often?) edited out of the song?

Indeed, "Hebrews" is cut out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c58ppLPJcQ

(lol of course "all about the Benjamins" exists outside of the Puffy song, that's just where my mind first went to, so it's a weird coincidence that there is an anti-semitic connection!)

morgan wallen’s thoughtless redemption tour is the nail in the coffin of me realizing these systems, and this town is really not for us.

imma keep making my lil music in my attic, y’all can listen if you want. i don’t know that i’ll do this work forever.

— Joy Oladokun (@joyoladokun) January 9, 2022

no thanks! @PLPMngnt pic.twitter.com/FqafaC7XgE

— The Black Opry (@BlackOpry) January 10, 2022

I finally heard a Morgan Wallen song, ama

have you seen his hair

are you safe?

I have not seen his hair lately.

I am safe and extremely bemused.

how bad was it?

was it about drinking?

The worst thing about it was how anonymous it was. I am admittedly not a pop country person but I didn’t identify anything about it that would merit Wallen’s elevation above every other semi-talented hack half-assembly churning out pop country bullshit. There was absolutely nothing remotely like the turns of phrase or presentation of the confessional that Taylor Swift brings to the table, for example; it was just country brostep nonsense that I’m struggling to actually remember because it was so aggressively uninteresting to me.

I am embarrassed and sorry that I was captured on tape.

What if everytime a musician committed any infraction, their punishment was to have the Engineer pretend to hit record, and then release a blank CD on release day

In Wallen's case it would go platinum

Pretty sure I've still never heard a Morgan Wallen song but perhaps the worst part of this, the worst song I've ever been subjected to, was making sure to name check the racist country bro in the country bro rap track.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnujskEgHnY

pull up
hop out
Walmart
late night

Christ, 31 of the top 50 songs on Spotify are by MW

Makes sense, probably a similar percentage of the rest of the internet is racist, too.

another victim of cancel culture

better not to look at this week’s Billboard Hot 100

Miranda Lambert's first co-write credit on a pop top ten single fwiw

I heard a Morgan Wallen song on a pop radio station this morning. I don't think I've ever heard them play a country song before.

still waiting on j0rdan's thoughts on the new album

where i will defend the previous album as a more or less front to back classic, this one is overly long, to put it mildly. i'm completely baffled by i.e. how there is a song that references keith whitley, and then another song, and then after that a song called "keith whitley" that doesn't seem to be in conversation at all w/ the song that 4 mins previously was referencing keith whitley over and over. just blatant stuff like that where i'm like, c'mon now. but i guess as a commerce play it's working for them. all that being said there's still a group of 15-18 songs that, as compiled into a playlist, is one of the best albums of the year for me.

i find him uniquely believable even w/in country as a deliverer of songs about substance abuse, and basically every song on this album is about substance abuse. idk that's been resonating w/ me this year, i won't get too much into it. but he's got people writing a lot of really great songs for him & he is a masterful performer of a lot of that work... even down to something as granular as the way he sings the word "jack" on "you proof." songs like "one thing at a time," "tennessee numbers," "keith whitley," "neon star," "98 braves" ... not a lot of stuff out there in any genre hitting for me like that. i guess i've made peace w/ who he is as a person, we'll see how it plays out

He seems to be trying to invoke whatever Keith Whitley represents for him -- this drunken angel who died too soon and too young -- but without the grace.

I liked about a third of the last album; this one just tired me out. "Tennessee Numbers" and "One Thing at a Time" totally work.

Every Morgan Wallen song I’ve heard has been at best terrible

I didn't bother giving this one another listen after the initial download.

jordan's post got me to listen to "you proof" - i like it!

The song I heard on pop radio was "Last Night." Makes sense--it has the same talk-singy quasi rap thing that you hear from the Jonas Brothers or any other male pop act these days.

'last night' is crazy. amazing song. whoever wrote that put their foot in it

I absolutely hated “You Proof”

same

I don't think I've ever heard them play a country song before.

they hadn't played any dan + shay, florida georgia line (tbh the first time i heard "last night" i thought maybe it was them, lol), lady antebellum, gabby barrett or whatever?

quite a few country songs are being crossed over radio-wise rn actually. there's a kane brown ballad w/ his wife from not too long ago that's... eh. also some parmalee song that's extremely boring and undistinguished. and a luke combs cover of "fast car" that is competent but whose most interesting part is that the 'checkout girl' lyric is left unaltered.

My primary thing, which I’ve purposely avoided spelling out given the rest of the context of this thread, is that this guy’s music is such absolute horseshit that I don’t understand why anyone posting here would give him the time of day after his well-documented racist outburst, given the political demographics of the posters in this thread.

otm

My primary thing, which I’ve purposely avoided spelling out given the rest of the context of this thread, is that this guy’s music is such absolute horseshit that I don’t understand why anyone posting here would give him the time of day after his well-documented racist outburst, given the political demographics of the posters in this thread.

― Marvel Puzzle Quest is my favorite gasm (DJP), Tuesday, May 9, 2023 8:41 AM (two hours ago)

well, i don't think his music is horseshit... the first post of this thread makes that clear. your point is an "if a, then b" statement but a doesn't apply to me. so then what? it's an internal negotiation about how much one likes art made by a person who says or does things that are otherwise offensive to one's sensibilities. unless you're someone who is driving an extremely hard line on what kinda art you consume, this isn't a very atypical situation. as a gay guy who grew up listening to rap music, i am -- for better or worse -- quite practiced at the art of compartmentalizing artists i love from the offensive things that they say. i never stopped loving lil wayne even though he rapped about how "you homos" are "getting AIDS in the ass" on a hit song that was played on the radio all the time. i loved the song. i still love the song! and i still hear that song. i'm not saying everyone should compartmentalize to that degree, but tons of people do, even now. i was just at a janet jackson concert last night & when she performed "scream" they showed clips of michael from the video & the crowd went crazy. no one could argue w/ a straight face that morgan wallen is a worse human being than a serial child rapist -- is it just that michael's music is so good that he clears some bar? or that his crimes and music are so far in the past that we don't really need to confront them? that they weren't caught on tape?

i mean, m@tt, since you enthusiastically otm'd the post... you're one of the biggest hip hop heads on this board. as a politically progressive, anti-sexist, anti-homophobe, you must have pretty developed thoughts on listening to music made by ppl who say things, or hold views that are, offensive to you. or is it just that the rap music you like isn't horseshit enough?

i mean am as full of shit as anyone else wrt to this stuff, yes.

though i do find the wallen thing particularly shitty, as it's pretty clear that his support among a large part of his audience actually grew as a result. like he's bigger and more ubiquitous than ever, and honestly a lot of this is having grown up in the rural midwest it's always grated on me the degree to which ilx seemed to have this weirdly idealized idea of who the audience for country music was.

but you're point about hip hop esp w/homophobia is well taken

as a gay guy who grew up listening to rap music, i am -- for better or worse -- quite practiced at the art of compartmentalizing artists i love from the offensive things that they say. i never stopped loving lil wayne even though he rapped about how "you homos" are "getting AIDS in the ass" on a hit song that was played on the radio all the time. i loved the song.

or simpler - i understand your thought process here but i think it's like how pundits would try to say people loved trump "despite" all the shit he said, but they specifically loved what he said. i think wallen got more popular because of what he said, which in fairness isn't what we were debating though.

though sometimes i do find it hard to listen to some old time rap favs from the 80s and 90s now, it's easy to forget how ugly it was wrt homophobia and i'll hear some song i haven't heard in years and be like goddamn that is hateful, like brand nubian is hard for me, partially because of jamar, just one example

I posted remarks similar to sarge's in the other thread.

i can't listen to death certificate much these days, despite it being just an amazingly produced album.

it's pretty clear that his support among a large part of his audience actually grew as a result.

This is a ridiculous claim

i can listen to Death Certificate mostly because of how educational it was to me about racial tension in America, things I hadn't really been exposed to in my charmed life. I just skip "Black Korea" and the song where he says his ass is a virgin mostly

yeah, i don't think i buy that, really. (xp) maybe a handful of people glommed onto him because of the incident(s?) and to fight the impending cancelation or w/e, but for the most part, his audience has grown because he makes incredibly catchy country-ish-meets-hip-pop music about drinking and smooching and there is a whole generation or two of people out there who have lived their whole lives shuffling country, pop and hip-hop.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2021/02/06/morgan-wallen-airplay-down-sales-streams-up-after-racial-slur-video/4419728001/

sure didn't hurt

he makes incredibly catchy country-ish-meets-hip-pop music about drinking and smooching and there is a whole generation or two of people out there who have lived their whole lives shuffling country, pop and hip-hop.

This. Younger country fans have grown up listening to The Weeknd, Future, and Drake.

sure didn't hurt

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, May 9, 2023 1:17 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

No, it didn't, but that's an entirely different claim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiUcY4dECqA

so there was no correlation between those numbers and what happened is your claim.

just magical timing i guess

My claim is maybe not everyone who fills arena after arena to listen to the guy who released what was already probably the most anticipated album of the year is some ultra-online weirdo who knows or cares what stance Variety or whoever is going to take on Morgan Wallen going forward

His new album wasn't out when he saw the post-scandal bump discussed in that usatoday article

I'm def sure a sizable percentage of his billion streams are patriots furiously owning the cancel culture lib cucks by politicizing their last.fm scrobbles as opposed to just listening to the incredibly popular musician they like

They do know that he was punished (songs taken off radio playlists, etc.) immediately after the video of him using the n-word came, though, and they responded by buying and streaming his music harder in response. ("The country music industry acted swiftly to publicly rebuke him and radio stations and streaming services removed his songs from their playlists. But fans responded by playing him even more.

Billboard reports that his latest album sold 25,000 copies during the week ending Feb. 4, an increase of 102%, according to MRC Data. Billboard reported that that the album’s streaming numbers slightly increased by 3%, representing roughly 160 million on-demand streams. Song downloads from the album also went up by 67%.")

He's clearly benefitted from reactionary grievance against 'cancel culture,' which is certainly not an issue restricted to ultra-online weirdos.

Yeah, I don't see why that's so hard to believe... same with the (unfortunate) R. Kelly bump also discussed in the piece

yea not just ppl who were trying to own the libs either but also ppl for whom its a marker of authenticity or w/e, like hes really one of us

Yeah, look at those monster spikes in that USA Today article

Billboard reported that that the album’s streaming numbers slightly increased by 3%

On Tuesday his popular song "Wasted On You" was ranked No. 14 on the Top 200 chart, but by Thursday, two days after the video was released, "Wasted On You" jumped to No. 9.

Truly must have been an army of angry, drooling CHUDS hate-streaming to stick it to cancel culture and the libturds instead of media outlets saying "Morgan Wallen" for an entire week then wondering why there's an uptick in interest in Morgan Wallen

Benefiting from cancel culture = a 3% uptick in streams.

I hope Morgan Wallen donates the $800 he's going to get from that

You picked the less-impressive sounding stats, and skipped these:

Billboard reports that his latest album sold 25,000 copies during the week ending Feb. 4, an increase of 102%, according to MRC Data. (...) Song downloads from the album also went up by 67%.

The bump in interest extended beyond just Wallen’s current album. Daily sales of his first album “If I Know Me,” released in 2018, also increased from 200 to 2,500 on the week ending Feb. 4, according to data provided by MRC Data.

this is a moronic argument. obviously there are people who think libs and the industry trying to shut down an artist for a slur makes them want to fight back. no one is saying ppl dont really like his music. im sure they do. but you cant unfold the racial slur from that. its an animating aspect of his brand

xpost Yeah, look at those impressive stats

I wouldn't dispute that he saw a big uptick in streams immediately afterward (and that sucks!) ... but I guess what I'm saying is that out of the massive numbers of people streaming his music and seeing his shows right now, the % of those motivated by his racist incident / racism is small. The vast majority are listening / attending because he makes music they like.

if you could quantify such a thing, how many of the 20,000 people in So-And-So Arena last week do you think were there because he said the n-word and how many were there because his songs remind them of drinking too much, kissing a boy and then passing out?

Why are we nit-picking ums's statement so much.

The thing he said isn't false, we are arguing over degrees and significance here.

Sorry by we I mean WGW

xpost Yeah, look at those impressive stats

xp LOL, you're the one who chose to skip over them. Look, your argument seems to be that folks here are somehow condescending to his listeners by not assuming that they heard "Morgan Wallen said the n word" and had an unthinking pavlovian reaction to his name alone

I think the guys acting like a very widely disseminated public gesture isn't a part of an artist's ability to attract and audience or that it doesn't shape the nature of that audience are deluding themselves to feel good about liking the artist

im not personally saying you cant still like the artist but I do object to the idea that minimizing what happened makes any sense. he got the n-word stimulus pack, imo it absolutely helped drive him even more centrally w/in the country music industry (which initially took moves to marginalize him that clearly had little to no effect long term), pretending otherwise is a bit delusional

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/does-the-mexican-american-community-still-love-morrissey-despite-everything/

https://laist.com/news/entertainment/do-latinx-fans-still-love-morrissey

Do we think all the Latinx Morrissey fans are "doubling down" too?

no one is saying that there aren't people who listen to morgan wallen who know what he did and don't care even though they disagree or are offended by it -- not really relevant

the question is whether his use of the slur accelerated or animated his fandom within country and I think it absolutely did -- some percentage outright racists, some anti pc culture warriors, some who dont think of themselves as racist but feel much more comfortable when white people can get away with saying it because they "didn't really mean it," some who don't agree with it but think an authentic country music star is probably a little racist and so it feeds into their image of what Real Country is, and so on, a spectrum that all sort of feeds into this and has pushed him closer to the center of the country world

acting like all these fans are just completely detached from this event & are simply responding to ever-improving music seems naive

I can't imagine being so racist that I'd spend $75 on a concert ticket just because someone was caught saying a slur on someone's Ring doorbell, but whatever

https://www.newsweek.com/anti-woke-beer-costs-four-times-more-bud-light-1794319

this whole argument is pretty boring bcuz it's just an argument about strawmen and incomplete data. the fact of the matter is we have no idea at what rate his music would have grown if not for this incident. we have no opposite test case. it may be even bigger, who knows. like...

They do know that he was punished (songs taken off radio playlists, etc.) immediately after the video of him using the n-word came, though, and they responded by buying and streaming his music harder in response. ("The country music industry acted swiftly to publicly rebuke him and radio stations and streaming services removed his songs from their playlists. But fans responded by playing him even more.)

is it supposed to be significant that after the guy's songs were erased from the radio people sought out other methods of listening to his music? it feels like the most simple logic imaginable that streams and sales would increase after the other main method of distributing his music was erased overnight. the implication is that people were supposed to just pretend his music didn't exist anymore and his streaming numbers would fall off a cliff? this gets into fantasy land about how people consume art that they have affection for.

in any event, it's worth noting that DJP's post was about why people in this thread are listening to the music & not why morgan wallen's fanbase at large listens to his music, or whether they listened to his music more or after the slur. one topic is actually pretty interesting & doesn't rely on strawmen fictions of the imagination that exist in all of our heads about a group encompassing millions of people that, let's just be honest here, very very few to nobody in this thread is interacting w/ on a daily basis

we also have zero historical context for an artist at this level in the streaming era having something like this happen to him or her & what effect that has on how ppl consume the music. you have to keep in mind that we're at the most nascent stage of having data on just about every time the large majority of america presses play on a song. so we can throw all sorts of data out there but any scientist or mathematician (which i am not) would tell you that its significance -- at either end of the argument -- is speculative at best bcuz our context for this situation in this environment is minimal to nonexistent. the implication w/ the streaming data is that 1 play = 1 protest and i would really push ppl away from that idea, generally, bcuz i don't think it would be found to be rooted in fact

in any event, it's worth noting that DJP's post was about why people in this thread are listening to the music & not why morgan wallen's fanbase at large listens to his music, or whether they listened to his music more or after the slur. one topic is actually pretty interesting & doesn't rely on strawmen fictions of the imagination that exist in all of our heads about a group encompassing millions of people that, let's just be honest here, very very few to nobody in this thread is interacting w/ on a daily basis

Start donating to my Patreon; if the number gets high enough I'll go door to door out here in rural Montana and ask my neighbors for their Morgan Wallen takes.*

*do not send me money; I will not do this

ehh jordan I think you're being a little dismissive of the idea that americans being ok with an artist willing to throw around racist slurs has absolutely zero causation, pure correlation, with his own success, based on like, history

i think one thing the streaming era has proven is that any kind of elevated conversation at all surrounding an artist, good or bad, will correlate with an increase in streams. frank ocean's streams increased dramatically in the wake of his coachella disaster, as one example.

i do think that a certain segment of morgan's fanbase was energized by the incident, and not just the regular chuds

i never said there was zero causation & would not claim otherwise. i read the comments on IG and twitter posts about tory lanez & dababy i know there’s ppl out there who think that streaming music is a way to stick it to the woke mob. but what i am saying is that ppl are throwing out all this data as if it’s meaningful but we don’t know the motivations behind any of those plays, and more to the point we have little to no historical context for how to judge the fanbase’s reaction vis a vis other cases. it’s not rocket scientist shit to say that data has to have some context for it to be meaningful. i think we can all agree that *some* portion of those plays were a direct reaction to the backlash against him, but how many of them? nobody has any idea nor could come close to making an accurate claim on that number. everyone in here is staring at a jar filled with 160 million jelly beans and claiming they know exactly how many red ones are in the bunch. which is why i think this whole argument is pretty stupid in the end

I agree, and I think your point about streaming potentially increasing as a natural reaction to less availability of his music on the radio is a good one – though fwiw, the Billboard article linked in that USA Today piece tracks the change (on both fronts) in a single day (Feb. 3, 2021). It seems unlikely that all those fans suddenly noticed less of his music on the radio and ran to buy his albums that same day, but who knows.

ran maskless to the Tupelo Best Buy

Guess he got hoarse from shouting at this thread as it popped up on his phone:

Morgan Wallen will be taking some time off from singing. The country star posted a video to his social accounts explaining that he had been placed on vocal rest for six weeks and would need to postpone upcoming tour dates, citing “vocal fold trauma.” https://t.co/rN3rR5Zoc4

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) May 9, 2023

he's not very hot is he. country star for internet rednecks. i can deduce all that from one photo, i'm magic what can i say.

good luck on your fold

he's not very hot is he.

He looks like wet ham

Morgan smiled at me!

https://i.imgur.com/bun4sAU.jpg

i read the comments on IG and twitter posts about tory lanez & dababy i know there’s ppl out there who think that streaming music is a way to stick it to the woke mob. but what i am saying is that ppl are throwing out all this data as if it’s meaningful but we don’t know the motivations behind any of those plays, and more to the point we have little to no historical context for how to judge the fanbase’s reaction vis a vis other cases.

I agree but I think there's something else going on here; in the case of the racial slurs, it accentuates rather than undermines our image of the Real Country Artist so as I described above, I think the effect is that his use of the slurs operates, whether he wanted it to or not, as a Successful Marketing Gesture. Whereas DaBaby being homophobic seems to inspire paternalistic attitudes of white america which make up the bulk of american music consumers.

a group encompassing millions of people that, let's just be honest here, very very few to nobody in this thread is interacting w/ on a daily basis

i would argue my opinions are informed by many years of interacting with people like this and being related to them

The idea that no one’s interacting with potential Wallen fans is hilarious.

have you guys asked the morgan wallen fans in your life why they listen to his music still? you should do it and come back here w/ the answers, i'd be genuinely curious what they have to say

i'm about to embark on a diner tour to chat w/ them

Ask them if he reminds them of ham

i'm about to embark on a diner tour to chat w/ them

― dyl, Tuesday, May 9, 2023 4:18 PM (fifty-six seconds ago)

maybe while you do that you can have ppl explain to you the difference between florida georgia line & morgan wallen. you might actually learn something

I agree but I think there's something else going on here; in the case of the racial slurs, it accentuates rather than undermines our image of the Real Country Artist so as I described above, I think the effect is that his use of the slurs operates, whether he wanted it to or not, as a Successful Marketing Gesture. Whereas DaBaby being homophobic seems to inspire paternalistic attitudes of white america which make up the bulk of american music consumers.

― xheugy eddy (D-40), Tuesday, May 9, 2023 3:53 PM (twenty-two minutes ago)

i agree w/ you on that being the more interesting question but i think it's going over ppl's heads bcuz not that many ppl in this thread are actually engaged w/ the music

this is an artist whose entire catalog -- even w/in the context of country -- is notably, and strictly, about drinking, doing drugs, mistakes, and regret. his love songs are, at best, wistful, but generally regretful and sad. listen to i.e. "7 summers," "chasin you," "sand in my boots" ... the happiness, the stability is always in the rear view. a person is always running, a memory is always being chased. on a more literal level the number of songs in his catalog that link his emotions directly to drinking are myriad... and there are no songs that are just breezy fun songs about cracking a beer w/ the boys. even an upbeat, generally lighthearted song like "everything i love" on the new album ends this way:

I can't go nowhere near the whiskey
'Cause you used to drink it with me
In the bed of my truck
And now I can't get drunk
Can't you see what you're doing, girl?
You ruined damn near everything I love

the darkness that is driving him to drink and use drugs is never ever subtext in his music ... it is always the text of what he sings about over and over again. even before he was doing stupid shit in public, he was -- in my opinion and i think in the opinion of ppl who drove songs like "chasin you" and "whiskey glasses" up the charts before he was even a mainstream concern -- a uniquely good interpreter of this kind of material.

and he is existing in a world where authenticity is the no 1 currency in music bar none in any genre. why are summer walker, sza, and jazmine sullivan scoring no 1 albums while normani and chloe bailey are flops? bcuz ppl want real stories, they want mess, they want to feel a genuine connection to a real person. they don't want polish, they don't want cleanliness. they want lil nas x being his true self on social media. they want pinkpantheress dressing in yoga pants and then re-posting memes about how it looks like she works at kmart. the weeknd did a whole album cycle where he was walking around w/ a bloody nose and bandages on his face -- very believable character for him -- and the world ate it up; he pivoted to a concept album about a radio station or some shit and nobody cared. why did miley cyrus have a huge hit single this year after years of flopping? bcuz it's a good pop song but also bcuz it was about her divorce. why does taylor swift keep getting bigger and bigger? even beyonce, the queen of impenetrable polish, has reached a new level of acclaim and cultural renown by making her music far more personal than it ever had been.

which is all to say that, yeah, it would be hard to argue that wallen having a public drunken episode where he did something stupid that he regrets would then undermine the appeal of his music. the same could be said of the incident where he had to postpone his SNL performance bcuz he was making out w/ a bunch of sorority girls during covid. for some people (i.e. myself) it might undermine the appeal of him as *a person*, but that's different to me than undermining his appeal as an artist. and of course i'm sure for some ppl it enhanced the appeal of him both as an artist and a person, but i don't really find it useful to speculate on for how many people that is true. and frankly for me as a listener, i don't really care. i can't care, if i'm going to listen to country music. miranda lambert is prob one of my favorite artists ever, and every time i've seen her -- in both texas and new york city -- the crowd has chanted "let's go brandon!" a lot of kelefa sanneh's writing about country music centers around this very dynamic. i do think that the spectrum you outlined in your previous post is broadly correct, though, and i find it to be a far more interesting & nuanced conversation than most of what has been talked about in here today (does 1 play = 1 protest?)

in the case of the racial slurs, it accentuates rather than undermines our image of the Real Country Artist

????

with Wallen's fans it does

crut you dont think there are a large number of people in this country who conceive of country artists as getting a little drunk and having a heated gamer moment

you're pathologizing people and anyway you're making the point too literal & simplistic

i'd put it this way -- there is obviously a very long history w/in country music of the (male) singer being the cowboy, the outlaw, saddling right up to and even crossing lines of decency, especially decency as defined by people outside of the south. and also of that same singer being regretful, and tender-hearted, nursing his loneliness under the neon moon & what not. you have to stretch very little to see how morgan wallen crossing lines of decency in a modern context -- flouting covid rules, getting caught on camera saying something that he shouldn't have said -- could accentuate (key word) his appeal as a kind of age-old archetype that has been central to this music (and culture) since its inception

i made this point in the miranda lambert thread but there's also the fact that his audience probably consists of a large number of people who view the world thru a christianity driven lens of sinning & being redeemed. forgiving a transgressor & welcoming that person back into the congregation is not really a foreign concept to whatever portion of his fanbase (i'm making no value judgement here)

Lambert's writing a song with Wallen as a show of forgiveness, as well as more cynical commercial ambitions (can't separate them!), came up with the country writers I saw at Pop Conference last week who know the scene better than I do.

The fact that Wallen's transgressions did take place more or less privately does maybe encourage forgiveness narratives, because he got *caught* doing something wrong, which imposes at least some degree of shame, which is different from, say, outlaw acts that proudly fly/flew the confederate flag and rubbed your face in it. Of course, that picture of the dude up above boasts a "dangerous" guitar strap, which implies he knows exactly what he is doing, leaning into his transgressions and imperfections, which kind of undercuts sympathy.

christianity driven lens of sinning & being redeemed. forgiving a transgressor & welcoming that person back into the congregation

What other values do modern evangelical Christians have that might inform their reaction?

idk Josh: he flouted COVID restrictions at the height of the pandemic

dangerous is the title of his last album

Obviously in tribute to Michael Jackson.

xpost Yeah, I think I knew that, but didn't he try to be sneaky about it? I mean, he got *caught*, isn't that why he lost the SNL gig?

Regardless, I think the broader question remains an interesting one. Can "cancelled" artists be forgiven? Should they? Who gets to decide when they have been rehabilitated or repented enough? It's a question without an answer, or at least one that has not been clearly answered yet. Personally, I think Morgan Wallen has been pretty easy to avoid, and I feel no compulsion to give him my time (beyond this thread, lol). But there are definitely other artists I've struggled with over the years.

the covid thing was “caught on camera” but he was making out w/ college girls in a bar that was a diff thing than being filmed by a ring camera

White evangelical Christians, well known for embodying empathy and forgiveness.

"Embodying," no. "Performing" or "rehearsing" yes.

Seems like a really convoluted way of saying his fans are used to giving people who resemble them a free pass - which doesn't contradict the idea that he was rewarded for being outed as a racist.

J0rdan I commend you for posts so good that they make me think in ways that feel productive about this guy whose music has exactly nothing to offer me

Jord the way you switch from admonishing everyone for this:

but we don’t know the motivations behind any of those plays, and more to the point we have little to no historical context for how to judge the fanbase’s reaction vis a vis other cases

To florid speculative fan fiction about the forgiving, kind Christian souls who make up his audience is pretty wild

he makes incredibly catchy country-ish-meets-hip-pop music about drinking and smooching and there is a whole generation or two of people out there who have lived their whole lives shuffling country, pop and hip-hop.

I also am old enough to remember when this same line of thinking was used a million years ago about Big & Rich... And we see who John Rich turned out to be.

B&R's Horse of a Different Color is better than either Wallen album, true, while Rich is an even worse person.

To florid speculative fan fiction about the forgiving, kind Christian souls who make up his audience is pretty wild

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, May 9, 2023 7:22 PM (twenty minutes ago)

well look it's not speculative fan fiction to say that there is a strong crossover between country music fans and christianity. wallen's new album directly addresses jesus on at least two songs, which given how many tracks are on the album might actually be a low ratio by country standards. now you might retort that it's not fan fiction to say that there is also a crossover between country music fans & people who listen to morgan wallen's music bcuz they're animated by racism, but for reasons i've stated already i feel less comfortable making that second assumption in a manner as sweeping as other ppl in this thread

and also i went out of my way to say that i wasn't making a value judgement in my post about christian music fans because i have no intention of claiming that his fans are unusually "forgiving" or "kind," only that such people are well versed in viewing life thru a lens of sinning and redemption, however flimsy their morals or actions are in reality. alfred spelled this out literally for milo in a way that i didn't think was necessary, but thank you alfred. i think anyone who has been posting here for as long as i have would not confuse me for an apologist of christianity

I assume a hunk of this dude's fans have no idea about the shit that went down. My wife, for example, likes country, sometimes listens to mainstream country, but had never heard or heard of him, let alone the backstory. But then, she's not Christian.

I assume a hunk of this dude's fans have no idea about the shit that went down.

i'm not sure what your exact definition of "a hunk" is but i'd find this very hard to believe. no offense to your wife but if she had never heard of morgan wallen i'm not sure she's really the best test case here

To listen to a contemporary country station like 99.9 in Miami is to get Morgan Wallen all the time.

I mean, maybe she's heard him? But she's definitely never heard of him. No idea why or how that is. To be fair, she really doesn't listen to *that* much radio country in the grand scheme of things, just more than I do (which is ... basically none?). I think she favors female singers, so that may be it.

That's the thing: mainstream country radio isn't much playing women.

thank you for the anecdotal case of your family once again, v helpful to the conversation

Jeez, dude.

I mean, I don't see why it would bug you, or anyone. They're just the people I spend the most time with. But whatever.

sorry i’m trying to delete it

anyway this has been a v good discussion do not mean to ruin it by being mad about posting tendencies

20 years ago, the Dixie Chicks were pretty much literally cancelled by country music, and the fans/industry didn't show much interest in Maines's apology (though I guess she wasn't all that sincerely repentant, either).

If Wallen had said "trans lives matter" or something along those lines, and country stations were pulling his songs due to fear of controversy, would he have seen the same immediate uptick in sales that he saw in 2021? And what would his "redemption" look like if he tried to walk that back? I guess this is where I'm coming from on the cultural angle (more than necessarily thinking his fans are "motivated by racism" or whatever)... just that it seems this redeemed-outlaw figure isn't actually supposed to speak freely at all, and in fact the whole thing really only seems to make sense in terms of reinforcing the community's own "values" (such as they are).

have you been falling the Zach Bryan story? He came after Travis Tritt last month when the latter attacked the Bud Lite ad. Then...

https://www.billboard.com/music/country/zach-bryan-travis-tritt-settle-feud-bud-light-1235304709/

Thanks, no, hadn’t seen it.

seen the same immediate uptick in sales

dogg, it was 3%.

those are good questions morris. comparing wallen to the dixie chicks highlights how critical streaming data is to this conversation. maybe the dixie chicks would've similarly went up the charts after their radio blackout if we had a mechanism to measure how many ppl migrated off radio to personal listening in response. maines made that comment 6 months after 'home' had come out... if you were a passionate chicks fan you probably already owned the album. you may not have been moved to go purchase another copy in protest, but you may have blared their music from your car as one. but we just don't have that kinda data.

there are some pointedly pro-gay country artists now -- miranda lambert being chief among them. marren morris, kacey musgraves obv. those last two have a tenuous relationship w/ country which may support your point, but they're not fully disconnected from the culture either. kelsea ballerini did a performance of her recent single at the CMT awards (in tennessee a month after the passing of their anti-trans legistlation) that featured drag queens & prominent displays of rainbow flag & trans pride colors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwJDLeCsVb0

i'm not going to pretend to know enough about the ins and outs of kelsea ballerini's career to say how this has effected her career. it looks like she has fallen out of favor on country radio even previous to this, so perhaps it made it safer for her to do this. obv she got some institutional support for this performance. you could also make the argument that gayness is anodyne enough now -- esp when compared to race & gender identity (i'm ignoring the concept of intersectionality here for a sec) -- that "LGBT" support isn't exactly sticking your neck out on the line the way it may have been. but maybe it is, i don't know.

it's also of course worth acknowledging that all the above examples are women. i don't love zach bryan's music but he definitely seems like someone who intends to upend the culture of country music in a number of ways, and he has a massive, extremely passionate fanbase, so maybe that's reason for encouragement.

i think morgan wallen *could* speak pretty freely to his fans, in ways that would challenge them, if he wanted to, but he doesn't seem like that kinda person, quite obviously. which also has to have something to do with why he's in that position in the first place.

Kelsea Ballerini out here on the CMTs doing a song about 69in' a lady, I gotta start payin attention to country

you can tell it's been too long between Chapelle specials, you're pretty wound up

Ballerini's EP released a couple months ago her best collection of songs imo.

now you might retort that it's not fan fiction to say that there is also a crossover between country music fans & people who listen to morgan wallen's music bcuz they're animated by racism, but for reasons i've stated already i feel less comfortable making that second assumption in a manner as sweeping as other ppl in this thread

come ON

its white america man, its all animated by racism !

I dont think it means the music is iredeemable or something, but I think you have to be kidding yourselves to think that him saying a slur didn't *inoculate* him with some fans as much as it repulsed others

i'm sorry but i've repeatedly agreed w/ that point in this thread including in the part you literally quoted but i.e.

for some people (i.e. myself) it might undermine the appeal of him as *a person*, but that's different to me than undermining his appeal as an artist. and of course i'm sure for some ppl it enhanced the appeal of him both as an artist and a person, but i don't really find it useful to speculate on for how many people that is true. and frankly for me as a listener, i don't really care. i can't care, if i'm going to listen to country music.

what i'm pushing back against is the monolithic presentation of his audience because it removes nuance from the conversation in several ways and makes for useless strawman-y back and forths. you actually were helping w/ this yesterday when you talked about the spectrum of motivations that could be feeding into his current fandom, but now you're doing the thing you do where you return to an argument a day after the fact in order to turn it into a nitpick-y spiral that makes everyone want to step in front of a train. i will not be participating in that much further

and again i think it's far more interesting to talk about the music, and why we may or may not be responding to it, bcuz it doesn't involve speculative theories (from either side of the argument) on the motivations of strangers. and again i'll note that was the substance of DJP's post from yesterday morning that re-sparked this conversation. guessing how many bad jelly beans are in the skyscraper sized jelly bean jar is pretty surface level stuff and i feel like we've sorta reached the limit of that discussion, as evidenced by this thread's 11 hour dormancy before your revival

and i feel like we've sorta reached the limit of that discussion, as evidenced by this thread's 11 hour dormancy before your revival

you guys are being real weirdos lol

sorry for not sitting on ilx for 11 hours in order to type prompt responses ... still think matt is right to point out there's a weird 'have it both ways' aspect to the defense of his fanbase, about which we can't speculate unless its in defense of their attachment to his music for wholly righteous reasons

no one has trouble saying that a large percentage of ie drill is animated by weird perverts who sit on r/chiraq and I dont really see this as much different tbh

it doesn't invalidate the music or someone but no one is saying it does, to me you guys sound like, overly defensive based on what people are saying here

dogg, it was 3%.

I don't know one working musician who wouldn't kill his next door neighbor for a 3% uptick in sales

And, sorry to nitpick this, but it was a 102% increase in album sales (and 67% increase in song downloads). It was streaming numbers that increased by 3% (don't know why streams and sales keep getting confused here).

david i’ve engaged in plenty of speculation in this thread with plenty of speculators bcuz most ppl on here can only theorize about the motivations of his fans bcuz they haven’t listened to the music. which is fine! i’m not trying to assign ppl homework & there is no barrier to entry to post in an ILX thread. i’ve just said that the usefulness of such conversation has hard limits because it just devolves into what both sides have accused the other of doing — engaging in speculative fan fiction. the fact that this thread had died before you revived it is evidence of the fact that those limits have likely been reached. as someone who likes to discuss actual music i’m sure you can understand my perspective here

i have no idea what goes on r/chiraq, i don’t really care, i don’t talk to ppl who think or talk about music thru the lens of perverted reddit posters, so that entire line of argument is completely irrelevant to me. you and whiney can get in touch privately to circle jerk over your personal taxonomies of reddit posters if that’s something that is interesting to you

It's not fan fiction to look at his numbers immediately following 'being cancelled' and drawing conclusions from them. Nor did anyone say all of his fans are racists or listening entirely because he was a victim of the libs, just that he benefitted from the culture war on that front.

It's also not fan fiction to talk about country fans' tendency to be white Christians but it does leave out big elements of what that means by talking about their comfort with the concept of sin and redemption while ignoring the rest of the ideological package of white Christian America and how that package might, in fact, play directly to his benefit vis a vis 'cancellation.'

J0rdan addressed your last paragraph yesterday.

Not really - not making a value judgement'however flimsy their morals or actions are in reality' doesn't really compute. Their favored sin and redemption narratives don't exist in a vacuum.

if you guys wanna talk about christianity as a larger topics knock yourselves out

i’ve already explained a number of times as to why that streaming data only has so much meaning beyond surface level interpretations bcuz we have extremely minimal context for what steaming data actually means historically. (this is true of course for basically any statistic involving streaming data. post malone was just crowned the record holder for most diamond singles in the history of recorded music. you may find that distinction a bit coincidental, or ahistorical, given his overlap with a streaming economy in which popular artists can rack up extreme ‘sales’ numbers bcuz we now tabulate all plays instead of simply all purchases or all radio spins. what does it actually mean that post malone has the most diamond singles in music history? is your “conclusion” that post malone is the most successful pop artist of all time?) the conclusions you think are being drawn are actually hypotheses. this is a 5th grade science project level understanding of what those terms mean in relation to data, to be honest. anyway, again, hypotheses and theories are fine, that’s largely what this discussion has consisted of, including my own involvement, but i guess i’ll say one more time that i think such discussions have a hard ceiling of usefulness, and then bow out of this particular argument cuz i’m just repeating myself over and over

there’s also album sales data, it’s not just streaming (why are we just talking about streaming??)

the sales data that has been posted says he sold 25,000 copies of dangerous in the week after the slur. in relation to the number of hard copies of albums typically sold in a given week these days, that is a notable though not outlandish figure. but as a percentage of his fanbase it's so infinitesimal as to be meaningless, in my opinion. the article linked below says he sold 840,000 tickets to his dangerous tour in the US. 25,000 is essentially 3% of 840,000. so we're talking about 3% of his fanbase going out and buying a protest album in the week after the video came out?

https://countrynow.com/morgan-wallen-wraps-record-breaking-dangerous-tour-earns-7th-no-1-with-you-proof/

The fucking Locust 7” sold like 20,000 copies, this is such a tiny fraction of anything

25,000 is essentially 3% of 840,000. so we're talking about 3% of his fanbase going out and buying a protest album in the week after the video came out?

He went on to become the biggest star in the genre after having a year wiped from playlisting … again I think you guys are delusional if you think artists in other genres survive something like that, and not only survive, but thrive

first off all he was already the biggest star in the genre & verging on one of the biggest stars in the history of the genre before any of this happened, so there was no “went on”

and your other point is just completely ludicrous. the entire first portion of eminem’s career, on a mainstream level, was defined by his use of slurs. he has merely thrived to the point of being one of the most respected and commercially successful artists in the history of rap. chris brown has been the top dog in male R&B unabated since he bloodied rihanna, assaulted numerous other women, tried to sabotage his career in myriad number of ways, doesn’t matter dude has a top 10 hit every year. kodak black stood trial for rape and then immediately released a song that became a top 10 hit, has continued to say horrible foul shit to women in public, has had even bigger hits, and was just the centerpiece guest on an album by rap’s only pulitzer prize winner. xxxtentacion… do i even need to get into this one? tay-k’s entire career was quite literally based on him killing some random innocent people and then making a song about how he was on the run from justice. the grammys just created a whole lifetime achievement award around dr. dre *this year*. you wouldn’t have to throw a rock further than 3 feet to hit a gay guy in brooklyn who will say “fuck dr. luke” and still hang on kim petras’ every move. that same point goes for just about every person i know who likes doja cat… “kiss me more” is just too much of a bop tho right? david bowie adopted fascism as an aesthetic and called hitler a rock star at the height of his fame. different time? doesn’t count? too close to the actual holocaust? your argument is full of shit dude, sorry.

XXX and Kodak basically had full media/radio blackout too

that part is immaterial, honestly. is the implication that fans of artists who have done way worse shit than say a slur are less responsible for their support of said artists if there was not an institutional blackout in response to their crimes? the industry never wavered in its support of chris brown so we shouldn’t expect his fans to stop supporting him? kodak black never got dropped from rap caviar so… we shouldn’t expect his streams to drop even tho everyone knows he’s a shitty person with documented assault allegations who routinely does creepy shit to women in public? it’s a nonsensical argument

xxxxpost His songs returned to Country radio in August 2021. So that was about 6 months.

And he was taken off of Spotify featured playlists for One Week

J0rdan, thank you for breaking down the album sales; I agree the bump doesn't seem as significant when viewed that way (even if you would hope that 0% of an artist's fan base would make "protest buys" in that situation).

according to Billboard, 25% of his US revenue for 2021 sales and streaming came in the 9 days after the video surfaced.

The album was released 25 days before the video surfaced. I wonder what percentage of his US revenue for 2021 sales and streaming came in those 25 days?

J0rdan, thank you for breaking down the album sales; I agree the bump doesn't seem as significant when viewed that way (even if you would hope that 0% of an artist's fan base would make "protest buys" in that situation).

― Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Wayne Manor (morrisp), Thursday, May 11, 2023 11:27 AM (forty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I was tellin J0 that if someone told me the % of people that would immediately stop or start listening to an artist as a response to a controversy was 3%, I would find that stat totally believable. I still hear MJ all the time. Chappelle stays touring arenas. People without online brainworms don't have the time nor inclination to litigate this shit then translate it into an informed consumer decision

I think a lot about when Seinfeld went on Letterman and let Michael Richards do his apology and had to go IT'S NOT FUNNY! STOP LAUGHING! because the audience of New York tourists had no fucking clue what Kramer was on about

xpost yes, it's not like the video came after his album had fallen off the charts. Those post-video sales were also coming off of an on-going promotional campaign.

yes, and it didn't fall off the charts after those 9 days either. it spent 10 weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 and 15 weeks on top of the country chart.

It's the longest running top ten album in history.

Beyoncé said "sp*z" and her album was immediately knocked from number one by Bad Bunny. Makes you think.

Eminem did not get wiped from playlisting. Neither did xxx, neither did Kodak, and neither does Kim Petras. Chris brown is playlisted all the time. Of the younger artists mentioned, ie the ones relevant to the current cultural paradigm, their careers were at the very least *set back* by what happened. Kodak is not at the center of the genre in the way this guy is to his. Tay k’s career is in jail so I’m not sure what the point of bringing that up is.

If your point is that anti social behavior can bolster artists in other genres, no shit .. that’s exactly what I meant when I brought up drill. But it does feel like country music fans rallied around this guy in a way that reflects an anti-woke industry dynamic, in a way that has lead to him being the leading voice in the genre

Obviously, as I said earlier, not all of them would explain it as “anti woke” or frame it in those terms, but it’s fundamentally underlying his continued success in a way I maintain you guys are being far too dismissive about

i have access to luminate (formerly nielsen), the company that tabulates all data for billboard charts, bcuz of my work. here is the streaming and airplay data from the 8 weeks starting w/ dangerous being released and continuing on past the slur video. this is catalog data meaning streams for both dangerous & all his previous records

notes: the dates here are all the final day of data counting for the given week. "radio audience" is a measure based on the number of radio spins. i don't feel like digging into each's week data to look at how many spins he did, but just for reference in the first week where he had a "radio audience" of 68 million that was equal to roughly 20,000 spins. and these are "on demand" streams, US only, meaning apple, spotify, youtube, pandora etc

1/14/21 (dangerous first week)

259 million streams / 68 million radio audience

1/21/21

194 million streams / 61 million radio audience

1/28/21

172 million streams / 59 million radio audience

*tmz video is posted feb 2*

2/4/21

180 million streams / 42 million radio audience

2/11/21

171 million streams / 1.2 million radio audience

2/18/21

131 million streams / 1.1 million radio audience

2/25/21

130 million streams / 1.2 million radio audience

3/4/21

122 million streams / 1.9 million radio audience

so yes, it's true that there was a slight streaming uptick in the tracking period that encompassed the first three days (feb 2/3/4) after the video's release. but by the next tracking period the streams had dipped back down to the number from the week prior to the video, and three weeks after that he had lost 50 million streams. if you extend it out another month -- to the tracking period ending on 4/8/21 -- he did 100 million streams. his streaming numbers were in decline every week through the tracking period ending on 5/20/21, when he did 89 million streams. so his streaming numbers essentially were cut in half in the ~3 months following the slur. you see the first uptick the next week (5/28/21), where he jumps from 89 million streams to 91 million streams. this seems to coincide with his first public performance (on 5/19/21) since the slur, but it dropped down the next period, and for the period ending on 6/10/21 he was under 85 million.

for everyone's sake i'll stop here, but the data beyond just the first week shows that his streams were cut pretty severely over time. he's continued to be a massive star setting all sorts of album chart records but that's because he was already starting from the insane heights reached when he released dangerous (260 million streams).

what that first week data really shows is that when a musician is in the news because of a controversy, people are basically reminded to listen to their music. frank ocean was brought up as an example earlier. here is a post on jezebel looking at different cancelled artists & their streaming data... r kelly's streams had a spike in the week following his gayle king interview, for instance

https://jezebel.com/these-musicians-were-canceled-but-people-kept-listenin-1840150589

for reference, last week wallen did 260 million streams. so you could maybe say his audience has returned to where it was when he dropped dangerous, but these are cumulative numbers including another 36 song album, so if his audience was completely unaffected -- or had grown -- we would probably expect to see even higher numbers

and just for fun here are last week's catalog numbers (US only) for some major artists if anyone is interested

taylor swift -- 317 million
morgan wallen -- 260 million
drake -- 194 million
the weeknd -- 113 million
sza -- 104 million
bad bunny -- 60 million

and now i should get back to my actual job...

Had no idea chastising country fans was a felony

https://i.ibb.co/RDkRH8C/Screenshot-20240408-152410.jpg

This guy may have a problem.

Apparently he threw a chair from the top of a sixth story rooftop bar down to the street below.

he did. the felony comes from almost hitting two cops (so I guess he has some redeeming qualities amidst the awfulness)

off a six-story building ... damn, dude is fortunate he's not facing assault or manslaughter or whatever.

I feel like there should be a term for dropping things off a building onto cops

Morgan Baller

what a dope. glad no one was hurt.

I'm surprised the cops didn't open fire, mistaking the chair for falling acorns.

What color was the chair?

So this was at Eric Church's bar. I wonder if it's classier than Kid Rock's bar (where Wallen was also arrested.)

I Love This Bar (But Not This Chair) and Grill

tbf He mistook the chair for Obama

I'm especially glad no one was hurt/killed because I cannot think of a worse evening than blowing money in Nashville's most obnoxious tourist trap bars and then being crushed by a chair thrown by Morgan Wallen

that's one for the epitaph

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nh-NsqBsGE

lol

All the obvious signs of a dickhead with a drinking problem. Which obviously is in line with the male-country-singer canon, but throwing a chair off the roof of Eric Church's dumb bar is hardly the stuff of George Jones legend. Try harder.

He could drive a riding mower off the roof of Eric Church's dumb bar.

then it might land on someone

The cops could cordon off the block

Cool. I don't care if anything happens to Morgan Waffen

It would be the best thing he's ever done.

Foreshadowing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GOkEmhQucY

His new "I'm the Problem" is another double album with 37 tracks.

Probably a gambit to get the most songs by a single artist in the top 100.

It's got wonderful songs and crap songs as usual.

sometimes I listen to the Apple Music Top 100 for an idea of what regular people listen to, just a straight here's the 100 most streamed songs today.

Currently FOURTY of them are Morgan Wallen.

Yep. But music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine in the free part of his substack that I get says in part:

Pugnacious in public, Wallen is insufferably polite on record. Able to hit his marks while approximating feeling, he doesn't invest his songs with distracting emotion, choosing to ease along melodies that are affable, not commanding. Lyrics are a distraction to the hooks, the hooks can spoil the vibe and the vibe is paramount. All this makes I'm The Problem profoundly boring. It hums along in the background, never asking anything of the listener and never giving them anything, either.

choosing to ease along melodies that are affable, not commanding. Lyrics are a distraction to the hooks

this is a correct assessment of the songs on the album that don't work, but not of the ones that do

i think it's easily his worst album since he blew up, fully half of it didn't need to be heard by the public. there is a definite effort to move towards a more melodically driven FM radio type sound, there is basically no song that is deeply country, there isn't a lot of clever songwriting, it leans a lot more into the tone of his voice and his ability to carry different melodies than his previous albums

it's a very acidic album but in a way that i don't think is all that interesting -- i would disagree w/ the notion that he's "insufferably polite." i think by that STE is saying that the album is sorta quiet -- you could play it at a dinner party -- but no close engagement w/ the lyrics would leave you feeling like he is overly polite. on the contrary his dickheadedness is distracting ... something like "kiss her in front of you" is unlistenable in that way, just really one dimensionally pigish. there is something chris brown-ish about the way he leans into villainy on the worst moments on this album. being a public pariah is infecting the music

there was a similar strand of spite in the last album but i thought it worked because it was aimed at himself -- it's a whole album about how he's a hopeless shithead addict. even on the songs where he celebrates that identity there was a pathos that softened the spikiest parts of the songwriting, for me anyway. this album is largely directed at unnamed exes, flings etc and isn't able to carry that dynamic over in the same way really at all

however you have a bunch of high level professionals aiming to write catchy soft rock pop songs for a great vocalist and so there's still a lot to like if you want to put in the effort of sifting through what is basically a big landfill of music. ofc can't blame anyone for not wanting to do so

I think he's peaking at a singer; even the songs I like wouldn't work if another singer didn't yarl over them.

My keepers:

Just in Case
Skoal, Chevy, and Browning
Falling Apart
Leavin's the Least I Could Do
Jack and Jill
Drinking Till It Does
Working Man's Song
Lies Lies Lies
I'm a Little Crazy
Nothin' Left

I'm in the opposite end of sarge's position. He's defensive in a way he hasn't been before, and, yeah, he's more loutish than he ever was, but it suits him. Depends on to what degree you approve of how well he reined in his swinishness on the last three albums and to what degree you think he's learned as a singer new ways of expressing it. "Jack and Jill" is a bitter lament, as incisive as anything by Haggard or Jones about how drugging can kill a relationship. 2021's "Somebody's Problem" now has proper names attached to it.

Also, "Working Man's Song" is the only white boy blooze I've heard from this genre in years that convinces me he's Method-acted through the imagined class politics.

"i got better" "if you were mine" "i ain't comin back" "missing" and "miami" are my favs of the ones you didn't mention

Can't remember which single I heard a week or two ago, but it sounded so similar to Rod Wave with autotune and a slow tempo.

"Miami" is based on a lovely early Keith Whitley song.

17 tracks of the Billboard Top 40 right now are Morgan Wallen tracks or feature Morgan Wallen

the quest to understand a douche bag and his shitty music because he's popular so it must mean something

oh is that why we listen

no idea, but the "unlistenable," "one dimensionally pigish" qualities are precisely what prevent me from having any desire to explore the catalogue beyond a few stray streams, no matter how many MW display stands i bumped into at target yesterday

Leaving aside that I find him kinda boring musically, Wallen's seething resentment is a little too familiar to me for it to feel anthropologically interesting. He spent his adolescence near where I live and is now a big local hero, they named his high school baseball field for him because he played on the team. And I've been to the extremely remote town where he spent his childhood, it's very much of a piece with struggling Southern Appalachia. On one hand I understand to some degree and sympathize to some degree with the roots of his brand of chip-on-the-shoulder Appalachian resentment. On the other hand, it curdles so easily into a kind of rote misanthropy toward anyone/everyone outside its comfort zone that it can be hard to countenance much less excuse. (And of course there are plenty of models of Appalachian self-awareness that overcome that knee-jerk nastiness.)

xp sorry, i must be losing my mind, but i thought somebody had posted the ann powers review itt. here's the quote i was reacting to:

I myself ignored Wallen for years, until "I Had Some Help," his inescapable radio smash with Post Malone, sucked me in last summer. [...] But Wallen just kept getting bigger, and so did country — as a hit generator, a crowd pleaser and a matter of debate.

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/29/nx-s1-5413566/morgan-wallen-im-the-problem

unclear from the quoted excerpt whether the causal chain is

the song became popular -> ann powers heard it a lot -> ann powers liked it

or

the song became popular -> ann powers thought “this must mean something” -> ann powers liked it

theres a somewhat widespread presumption that it’s the second, but i don’t know of any pop music critics saying so explicitly. among casual music listeners the first is obviously much more common

I totally took it to mean that she liked the song and thought "Ok let's see what this guy's about."

Just asking questions. #kaleefa

I love how ilxors always remain baffled by the idea that anyone enjoys country music

#notallcountry

I think lots of ilxors enjoy country music! I do. But a few singles aside, Wallen's never grabbed me. I was inclined to root for him early on because of his local-boy status, but even that's been curdled by his easy embrace of/by the GOP Tennessee power structure. (As Powers notes, he was just out turkey hunting with our terrible school-privatizing immigrant-fear-mongering governor.)

Funny, just the other day I was trying to suss out Eric Church's politics, and there was an anecdote in there about him fishing with Morgan Wallen. I guess Wallen is Tennessee's go-to celebrity hunting +1.

I love how ilxors always remain baffled by the idea that anyone enjoys country music

― Iza Duffus Hardy (President Keyes), Sunday, June 1, 2025 12:37 PM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i get a lot out of the country music discussions on this board, seems to me like a lot of ppl here take it seriously and really enjoy it?

It's the parts of him that don't sound like country that make me curious, like the duet with Lil Durk and the aforementioned overall Rod Wave similarity. Based on what I've heard, someone wouldn't have to think they like country to like the sound of these songs.

I love how ilxors always remain baffled by the idea that anyone enjoys country music

I understand how people can enjoy a lot of the country music that gets praised around here. Miranda Lambert, for example. I don't like her music, but I understand what's appealing about it. I bought two Eric Church albums and liked one significantly more than the other, but there too I understand the appeal.

This guy, though... there's just absolutely nothing there. I see a bunch of writers bending over backwards to find something to say about a guy who, even if you discount his repellent public persona and drunken racism, might as well have been grown in a vat. Like, even if you really, really like country music as a whole, there's gotta be people doing it better than this meat puppet. And sorry, writing about him just because he's popular should only be your job if you write for Billboard. Even if your angle is "this guy sucks, so why is he popular?" you're wasting your, and your hypothetical reader's, time.

Yeah, the problem is not country, it's him and his music.

pretty much.

there's a line in the title track that's along the lines of, "if i'm so abusive, how come you haven't left me? if i have a such a bad drinking problem, then how come you're drinking too?" combine that with his complete douche vocal affectation and yeah, i just can't do it

i'm sure there are ppl who just eat that shit up, though!

evidently there are millions of them

Whoever my favorite singer is, country or otherwise, I know I don't want to see them occupy 17 positions in the Top 40. That's just obnoxious. They're gaming the system.

in this case, I'd point to the tired expression "don't hate the player, hate the game", the game being Billboard etc

oh there’s plenty to go around for both

I live outside NYC: the 20-ish people I encounter here like hip-hop and country. But in 30 years of living in NYC, mainstream country was utterly absent in an "in the wild" context. So I more or less don't know what its like to live in an environment where mainstream country is everywhere in the wild (although I lived in louisville from ages 0-18), and is as such designed to make the country audience feel seen, or rather to have its values reinforced. I listened to country radio for several hours Friday, and it is staggering how often the songs are defensive of the country lifestyle, like "I love being from a small town" and "drinking at the level alcoholics do (for I am an alcoholic) is awesome" and "smoking cigarettes is awesome because big city/high class scolds don't like it" and also something that for sure wasn't present in country music in recent decades: "smoking reefer is great." also there's "white southern girls are hot." I didn't hear anybody do songs about their trucks, but most of these sentiments, however redolent of smallmindedness, were expressed with wit and eloquence, i.e. the songs were written very very well. I don't think hip-hop or pop has parallels to this tendency to pat their audience on the head and tell them "we are so great" in this manner.

I think many of you guys live in red states now, or grew up in red states or red environments, and despise Morgan Wallen and the people and values he very plainly represents. And I don't blame you. I do however think that ILM people should strive to be able to recognize excellent songwriting, even if it's coming from shitheads like this guy. Shitheads from small southern towns can remain unreconstructed shitheads from small southern towns their whole lives, and be great recording artists the whole way. Again, i can see that this would be hard to accept if you have to deal with bigoted, smug assholes who think the world looks down on them for the same reasons they think are self-evidently awesome.

I think Zach Bryan is for people who live in red states/red environments, have pride in many aspects of southern culture, cannot help but feel country music deeply, but hate people like Wallen and hate trumpism, racism, homophobia and smallmindedness. And yet I think Wallen is worth ten million Zach Bryans. Being an asshole doesn't mean you suck as a musician/recording artist. Often quite the contrary.

the "unlistenable," "one dimensionally pigish" qualities are precisely what prevent me from having any desire to explore the catalogue beyond a few stray streams, no matter how many MW display stands i bumped into at target yesterday

― budo jeru, Sunday, June 1, 2025 11:50 AM (eight hours ago)

well, a lot of my issues w/ this album feel like something that happens to a lot of artists, where fame starts to consume them and they become insular and resentful of the outside world. a few stray lines aside wallen stays too in character to complain about fame in a literal way in his music, but the trajectory of his celebrity has gotten him to a place where he doesn't seem to be enjoying his life a ton. that's certainly the impression you get from this album. i think there has to be a lot of projecting happening to position his music as resentful or reactionary in some sort of political way -- the album is almost entirely about bad relationships. i do think he toes this line purposefully -- even the album title can be viewed as gesturing to any number of aspects of his celebrity, but on the title track it's very simply rendered w/in the context of a failed relationship.

i don't find him to be a very political musician, personally -- or at least his brand of southern politics doesn't strike me as noteworthy w/ in the context of country music. he has not been outlandish or outspoken since becoming a lightning rod figure, the "controversies" cited by ann powers still boil down to "breaking covid protocols" (who among us...) and throwing a chair off a balcony, which is male diva behavior i'm not going to pretend to clutch my pearls over. "get me back to god's country" is about as close as he has gotten to some sort of overt political statement and even that was so innocuous that it was easily reclaimed as a meme by the people it was meant to spite. as powers notes in her piece, wallen didn't post the photo of him hunting w/ tennessee gov on his own IG, and as far as i can tell he's never endorsed any politician despite being probably the most famous southern man in america. i'm not applauding him for what is likely just self-preservation but i do think people bring their feelings about what he represents as an avatar for a certain part of america to bear against his music when the songs themselves largely decline to engage in much beyond the personal. even "come back as a redneck" on this album is trading in toothless caricature -- it describes a "mr. city man" with a "nasdaq in [his] hand" who rolls his eyes at the protagonist's "beat-up truck" (i find the song tuneful). i was happy to read powers note, after a good deal of anthropological excavation, that you can explain a lot of wallen's appeal in the way you can many pop stars. nobody bends over backwards to try and "understand" why people like the weeknd, even though the two share some important qualities (unique and malleable singing voice, believable seller of hedonistic pop songs) that explains their success

i liked wallen's breakthrough album because it's a largely knockout collection of mainstream country songs delivered by an upstart figure who is perfectly cast as the wounded wildheart at its center. i liked his last album because the nihilism people now associate w/ him was turned inward -- the album is a portrait of addiction that i find sad and pathetic but also compelling and relatable. the quality started to dip w/ that one, and w/ each of the last three records you do have to spend time listening and re-listening to a lot of music to pluck out the songs you connect w/, so on a purely logistical level his music presents a hurdle that i can't fault many people for declining to clear. this album, for my money, rewards that time investment the least even though i count like 15 good songs. but i think that there is a lot of engagement w/ the cultural baggage his celebrity carries that leads people to misunderstand the music, and because mainstream country is still considered déclassé (or, at best, a trifle) in circles of good taste i think it's easier for people to just engage w/ the baggage and then throw the baby out w/ the bathwater

i think there has to be a lot of projecting happening to position his music as resentful or reactionary in some sort of political way -- the album is almost entirely about bad relationships.

Yeah for sure, by "resentment" I meant the relationship songs, at least some of which are off-putting and whiny and make him seem small. I do think there's something fairly identity-politics about a white guy naming an album I'm the Problem and then having a title track about how no actually you're the problem. But he's not explicitly political. It's just his vibe. Our congressman is like that too. They're these guys who've spent their whole life suspecting other people are looking down on them and fantasizing about rubbing it in their faces. Which is understandable but only goes so far as a character trait.

Anyway, if you haven't seen it, this is what his entrance to his first Neyland Stadium concert looked like. You can see how it's hard for me to separate him from the state power structure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15aAvPiSKfY

And if I liked his music more I'm sure I'd forgive a lot more of all of that. I think he's talented, I get why he's successful, but I'm not that into it. He's kind of a Drake figure for me maybe.

Apt comparison, otm.

agreed. for me it's not really a culture war or red state thing, or even a perception that mainstream country is in poor taste. it's just that if you put your resentful, small-minded jock persona at the center of all your songs, and i don't find anything redeeming about them musically, then i might end up disliking your music with more feeling than if it was just something anodyne

Good discussion.

Funny he covered a Whitley song. There are some similarities there - young star with big hits right out the gate, drinking problems- but Whitley was actually able to display vulnerability. He should try “Don’t Close Your Eyes” next.

I can't believe they got Peyton into a full uniform for that walkout. That's hilarious.

Also: How do you not walk out to "Rocky Top" ??

I believe he saved "Rocky Top" for the lead-in to the encore.

Wallen has displayed vulnerability but ymmv

but Whitley was actually able to display vulnerability

well, wallen at his best is able to do this, too. certainly when he was blowing up there was vulnerability and tenderness to his songs and i think that's a big part of what made him a compelling artist. big early hits of his like "whiskey glasses," "chasin you," "7 summers," "somebody's problem," "sand in my boots" are more wistful than any other emotion, to me. there isn't much if any defiance, "seething resentment" etc in those songs -- but they're also written from the perspective of someone who is, like, looking ahead at life? who has suffered some heartbreak but still allows some optimism to shine through? as i've said a few times, i think that over time, as he has become more famous, the songs have shed those qualities and have instead become more hardened, resentful, and depressed. again, i still find him to be often quite effective in that mode, but i do think his music has suffered through this shift in persona

I've only heard some of his songs, but I definitely get that vibe. The title track song that's popular kind of has this sneering resentment, like the person he's dating is trying to say "I have a lot of fun going out, drinking whiskey, you getting into some shit at the bar, but maybe we need to grow up?" and his rejoinder is "well you keep going out with me and seem to be having fun"

"I got where I am now being like this, why should I change?" is almost a national ethos at this point

xp I would argue based on the little I know about Wallen's backstory that Whitley's life was on the whole far more tragic, to the point where you can almost hear a particular kind of desperation in even his corniest hits. Then again, maybe I'm romanticizing Whitley and hearing more darkness that there actually was based on how things turned out. It also makes me think about someone like Luke Bell, whose demons seem far more apparent in his music in retrospect, at least to me.

I listened to this whole content dump album today in an attempt to get past my kneejerk reaction to not liking Wallen as a person. And this isn't a "must listen to understand popular people" thing, more motivated by son recently getting into country and trying to find common ground with his tastes (he's not a huge Wallen fan really, but did have a couple of his songs on a playlist he made me).

Anyway, much of the first half of this is astonishingly bad and bland (with a few exceptions) and I almost gave up. I won't say the second half completely redeemed the project, but it was significantly better. I agree with much of Alfred and Jordan's favorite songs.

It definitely didn't convert me to a fan or even someone mildly interested in him, especially with how often he sounds like an asshole with a chip on his shoulder (as others have noted), but I can recognize that when he has some good material to work with he's not an untalented guy.

I'd add "Genesis," whose conceit is exactly why I listen to country (also: its ickiness).