morgan wallen

i read the comments on IG and twitter posts about tory lanez & dababy i know there’s ppl out there who think that streaming music is a way to stick it to the woke mob. but what i am saying is that ppl are throwing out all this data as if it’s meaningful 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.

I agree but I think there's something else going on here; in the case of the racial slurs, it accentuates rather than undermines our image of the Real Country Artist so as I described above, I think the effect is that his use of the slurs operates, whether he wanted it to or not, as a Successful Marketing Gesture. Whereas DaBaby being homophobic seems to inspire paternalistic attitudes of white america which make up the bulk of american music consumers.

a group encompassing millions of people that, let's just be honest here, very very few to nobody in this thread is interacting w/ on a daily basis

i would argue my opinions are informed by many years of interacting with people like this and being related to them

The idea that no one’s interacting with potential Wallen fans is hilarious.

have you guys asked the morgan wallen fans in your life why they listen to his music still? you should do it and come back here w/ the answers, i'd be genuinely curious what they have to say

i'm about to embark on a diner tour to chat w/ them

Ask them if he reminds them of ham

i'm about to embark on a diner tour to chat w/ them

― dyl, Tuesday, May 9, 2023 4:18 PM (fifty-six seconds ago)

maybe while you do that you can have ppl explain to you the difference between florida georgia line & morgan wallen. you might actually learn something

I agree but I think there's something else going on here; in the case of the racial slurs, it accentuates rather than undermines our image of the Real Country Artist so as I described above, I think the effect is that his use of the slurs operates, whether he wanted it to or not, as a Successful Marketing Gesture. Whereas DaBaby being homophobic seems to inspire paternalistic attitudes of white america which make up the bulk of american music consumers.

― xheugy eddy (D-40), Tuesday, May 9, 2023 3:53 PM (twenty-two minutes ago)

i agree w/ you on that being the more interesting question but i think it's going over ppl's heads bcuz not that many ppl in this thread are actually engaged w/ the music

this is an artist whose entire catalog -- even w/in the context of country -- is notably, and strictly, about drinking, doing drugs, mistakes, and regret. his love songs are, at best, wistful, but generally regretful and sad. listen to i.e. "7 summers," "chasin you," "sand in my boots" ... the happiness, the stability is always in the rear view. a person is always running, a memory is always being chased. on a more literal level the number of songs in his catalog that link his emotions directly to drinking are myriad... and there are no songs that are just breezy fun songs about cracking a beer w/ the boys. even an upbeat, generally lighthearted song like "everything i love" on the new album ends this way:

I can't go nowhere near the whiskey
'Cause you used to drink it with me
In the bed of my truck
And now I can't get drunk
Can't you see what you're doing, girl?
You ruined damn near everything I love

the darkness that is driving him to drink and use drugs is never ever subtext in his music ... it is always the text of what he sings about over and over again. even before he was doing stupid shit in public, he was -- in my opinion and i think in the opinion of ppl who drove songs like "chasin you" and "whiskey glasses" up the charts before he was even a mainstream concern -- a uniquely good interpreter of this kind of material.

and he is existing in a world where authenticity is the no 1 currency in music bar none in any genre. why are summer walker, sza, and jazmine sullivan scoring no 1 albums while normani and chloe bailey are flops? bcuz ppl want real stories, they want mess, they want to feel a genuine connection to a real person. they don't want polish, they don't want cleanliness. they want lil nas x being his true self on social media. they want pinkpantheress dressing in yoga pants and then re-posting memes about how it looks like she works at kmart. the weeknd did a whole album cycle where he was walking around w/ a bloody nose and bandages on his face -- very believable character for him -- and the world ate it up; he pivoted to a concept album about a radio station or some shit and nobody cared. why did miley cyrus have a huge hit single this year after years of flopping? bcuz it's a good pop song but also bcuz it was about her divorce. why does taylor swift keep getting bigger and bigger? even beyonce, the queen of impenetrable polish, has reached a new level of acclaim and cultural renown by making her music far more personal than it ever had been.

which is all to say that, yeah, it would be hard to argue that wallen having a public drunken episode where he did something stupid that he regrets would then undermine the appeal of his music. the same could be said of the incident where he had to postpone his SNL performance bcuz he was making out w/ a bunch of sorority girls during covid. 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. miranda lambert is prob one of my favorite artists ever, and every time i've seen her -- in both texas and new york city -- the crowd has chanted "let's go brandon!" a lot of kelefa sanneh's writing about country music centers around this very dynamic. i do think that the spectrum you outlined in your previous post is broadly correct, though, and i find it to be a far more interesting & nuanced conversation than most of what has been talked about in here today (does 1 play = 1 protest?)

in the case of the racial slurs, it accentuates rather than undermines our image of the Real Country Artist

????

with Wallen's fans it does

crut you dont think there are a large number of people in this country who conceive of country artists as getting a little drunk and having a heated gamer moment

you're pathologizing people and anyway you're making the point too literal & simplistic

i'd put it this way -- there is obviously a very long history w/in country music of the (male) singer being the cowboy, the outlaw, saddling right up to and even crossing lines of decency, especially decency as defined by people outside of the south. and also of that same singer being regretful, and tender-hearted, nursing his loneliness under the neon moon & what not. you have to stretch very little to see how morgan wallen crossing lines of decency in a modern context -- flouting covid rules, getting caught on camera saying something that he shouldn't have said -- could accentuate (key word) his appeal as a kind of age-old archetype that has been central to this music (and culture) since its inception

i made this point in the miranda lambert thread but there's also the fact that his audience probably consists of a large number of people who view the world thru a christianity driven lens of sinning & being redeemed. forgiving a transgressor & welcoming that person back into the congregation is not really a foreign concept to whatever portion of his fanbase (i'm making no value judgement here)

Lambert's writing a song with Wallen as a show of forgiveness, as well as more cynical commercial ambitions (can't separate them!), came up with the country writers I saw at Pop Conference last week who know the scene better than I do.

The fact that Wallen's transgressions did take place more or less privately does maybe encourage forgiveness narratives, because he got *caught* doing something wrong, which imposes at least some degree of shame, which is different from, say, outlaw acts that proudly fly/flew the confederate flag and rubbed your face in it. Of course, that picture of the dude up above boasts a "dangerous" guitar strap, which implies he knows exactly what he is doing, leaning into his transgressions and imperfections, which kind of undercuts sympathy.

christianity driven lens of sinning & being redeemed. forgiving a transgressor & welcoming that person back into the congregation

What other values do modern evangelical Christians have that might inform their reaction?

idk Josh: he flouted COVID restrictions at the height of the pandemic

dangerous is the title of his last album

Obviously in tribute to Michael Jackson.

xpost Yeah, I think I knew that, but didn't he try to be sneaky about it? I mean, he got *caught*, isn't that why he lost the SNL gig?

Regardless, I think the broader question remains an interesting one. Can "cancelled" artists be forgiven? Should they? Who gets to decide when they have been rehabilitated or repented enough? It's a question without an answer, or at least one that has not been clearly answered yet. Personally, I think Morgan Wallen has been pretty easy to avoid, and I feel no compulsion to give him my time (beyond this thread, lol). But there are definitely other artists I've struggled with over the years.

the covid thing was “caught on camera” but he was making out w/ college girls in a bar that was a diff thing than being filmed by a ring camera

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