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