Morgan Wallen

Morgan Wallen: Dangerous: The Double Album (2001)

Thanks to a cancellation-lite that turned out to be mutually lucrative for both himself and Universal Music, this is 2021’s most played album, leading Sour by half a billion streams. In preparation for the country biz rehabbing his not quite accidental racism, let’s focus on his musical sins. It’s easy to see the appeal of his gruff low-end and surprisingly supple head voice, yet his default is an indifferent midrange that multitracking only manages to make as ungainly as thirty to fifty pitch-corrected feral hogs. This schtick allows him to rightfully criticize blue staters who think “this accent makes me dumb.” However, those used to the sophisticated wit of a Luke Combs or a Stone Cold Steve Austin will generally find it difficult to identify a smart line, no matter how long they stare at the lyrics of the Isbell cover. There’s one miracle: “7 Summers”, a whiskey-and-coke (not wine, are you a girl) fueled nostalgia-fest that believes in celebrating moments of beauty that start to look like lost opportunities once you gain some distance from them. Certainly I would’ve found it easier to decouple his few good songs from his extra-musical persona 1.75 Presidential terms ago.

Grade: C PLUS

Lil Durk & Morgan Wallen: “Broadway Girls” (2001)

I take little pleasure in reporting this is good (not morally, duh, though maybe dialectically.) Wallen sings in a tone as anti-bourgeois as Durk’s best fiend Chief Keef’s about the perfidy of the Nashville bachelorette: who knows if one might wake up in the morning and find out she’s gone or liberal. Durk, the smart one, knows said perfidy is irrelevant as long as his money doesn’t run out; he’s so seductive you might find yourself nodding along before you realize this is also kind of terrible. More informative than r/relationships, with better aesthetics.

Morgan Wallen: One Thing at a Time (2003)

Most obviously, at thirty-six tracks it’s too fjucking long. And the majority of the songs are slight, not least sixteen week Billboard number one “Last Night”, which is two verses, two choruses, short outro that recapitulates the same middling wordplay as the choruses. The combination of quantity and low degree of difficulty together, however, appears to be what his young streaming audience wants: stats suggest the majority of listeners are plowing through the whole 1:52 of the record, and a few billion thirds of cents do add up. The sequence of one-things-at-a-time resembles that old country tradition, the variety show—here’s a beer song, here’s Eric Church for three minutes, make sure to visit the Opry gift shop on your way out. Wallen goes out of his way to play nice, toning down Dangerous’s signature coarse high-end to instead find plenty of simulated passion in the safety of mid-range, and you can bet that NashvilleMoth has engineered each setting to glossy flawlessness. Now and then they even let Wallen express himself, within limits. The times he perks up are when he gets a good sports metaphor to work with, and when he cosplays Young Thug on a “Lifestyle” localization, which might make centenarians recall a precedent in another hugely popular/problematic variety show host (and genuine fan of Black music.) Without having to go down on one knee, the Miranda Lambert co-write “Thought You Should Know” and album centerpiece is a classic mama’s-boy song; it was meant to be the sop for country radio, only they too preferred “Last Night”. If he’ll never fill Garth’s hat, it’s not just his head’s, or his mouth’s, fault.

Grade: B PLUS (“Thought You Should Know”, “98 Braves”, “180 (Lifestyle)”)

Post Malone & Morgan Wallen: “I Had Some Help” (2004)

Just when Song of the Summer, Inasmuch As Any One Song Can Be Said To Be “The” Song of the Summer (which hereon I’ll abbreviate as “Song of the Summer”) looked like a straight-up duel between Kendrick and Tommy Richman, here come the former and current biggest male stars in America. That the song is very good (and insanely catchy) isn’t surprising given how mission-critical it is to UniMoth, plus even before his Bey/Taylor duets turned him face, Posty has always been more interesting playing with others. More surprising is how willing Wallen is to play second fiddle: here comes a carpetbagger who immediately reveals himself to be the Daryl Strawberry to your Homer Simpson, and you’re enthusiastically lending him a hand up? If it turns out he’s secretly gathering intel for a dis track, I might have to finally give him his A minus.

Morgan Wallen: I’m the Problem (2005)

As always, you don’t have to listen to this, and you definitely don’t have to listen to it all at once. The most interesting contiguous half runs from pop radio bid “What I Want” to inoffensive streaming juggernaut “Love Somebody”; tack on the “Miami” remix, on which he flies south to find anonymity, Lil Wayne, and Rick Ross, who think he’s the guy from The Righteous Gemstones. There are few other risks, but he continues to improve as a singer. If you listen to What Not To by his clone Tucker Wetmore (which you super-duper don’t have to), you can hear in comparison how Wallen’s worked on his upper register to not be so fjucking whiny, not to mention Morgan has heard a rap song in his life. The peak of I’m the Problem starts with “Kick Myself”, as in “kicked the bottle… but I just can’t kick myself”, and before you volunteer a foot, a 8-bit bomb synth descends, which Wallen adeptly dodges. Following that is “20 Cigarettes”, which has an unusual harmonic progression towards a mid-chorus release, and the best quantification of time through vices since “Beers Ago”. Things soon go south, with exurban pride and male ressentiment that you can penalize as many notches as you want for, though note that the HARDY duet “Come Back as a Redneck” urges the successful to check their privilege with as much vehemence as any Tumblr post. Wallen’s closer than ever to a proper good album, and continues to have no incentive to make one.

Grade: B PLUS (“20 Cigarettes”, “Kick Myself”, “Number 3 and Number 7”)