morgan wallen

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.