morgan wallen

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.

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