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.

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).