morgan wallen

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).