Morgan Wallen: the record-breaking country star dominating America

Based on music alone, the country singer Morgan Wallen should not be a polarizing figure. The eastern Tennessee native sings about drinking, girls, God and life in a small town. His style is endearing bro-country lite – tight jeans, T-shirts, slight mullet, husky twang. Yet his massive commercial success presents a conundrum in American popular music: an artist ubiquitous to some but unheard of to others. And his chart dominance continues to drive at times baffled headlines, in large part because of a February 2021 video, first published by TMZ, of Wallen shouting the N-word at a friend outside his house. The use of a racial epithet torpedoed Wallen’s crossover appeal and generated a short-lived corporate backlash, but didn’t put a dent in his staggering commercial base.

By the time Wallen arrived in Chicago for back-to-back concerts at Wrigley Field this weekend, he had already spent more than half of 2023 atop the Billboard charts, with more weeks at No 1 than any country album in 30 years, and the longest consecutive streak atop the Billboard 200 since the Titanic soundtrack in 1998. His third studio album, One Thing at a Time, was streamed more than 52m times on its release day, setting a single-day Spotify record. His eponymous album tour is not only one of the biggest country music tours of all time, but one of the biggest tours in music, originally encompassing 58 shows in four countries, including 30 stadiums. While Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has generated headlines and become a social media reality show for the better part of the year, Wallen’s sojourn across the country has, with notably less mainstream press owing to his splintered celebrity, become America’s other major tour.

And, as many things go in Wallen’s world, it’s not without controversy. Thursday’s Chicago concert marked his return to the stage for the first time in six weeks, after he cancelled several dates owing to doctor-mandated rest for vocal fold trauma. “[My doctors] told me that if I do this the right way, that I’ll get back to 100%,” the 30-year-old singer said in a video posted to his Instagram. “And they also said that if I don’t listen and I keep singing then I’ll permanently damage my voice. So for the longevity of my career, this is just the choice I have to make. I hate it, but I love you guys.”

The announcement arrived days after he pulled out of a stadium show in Oxford, Mississippi, minutes before he was to take the stage, angering some of the 60,000 fans who had waited up to three hours to see him perform. There were outraged tweets – “COMPLETE BULLSHIT!!!” as one fan put it – and the usual social media rumor mill: that Wallen waited too long to pull the plug, that he had to have known earlier that he couldn’t sing. In one viral TikTok, a security guard claimed that Wallen was too drunk to perform and had to be taken away in an ambulance. (The story tied into Wallen’s oft-lyricized and proud reputation as a boozer; both the security company and Wallen’s team publicly disputed it as “false” and “made-up”.)

Wallen and his team have since been in damage control, both for his voice and for disappointed fans. Wallen posted an Instagram apology in which he said he truly thought he could perform up until the last minute of the cancelled show. Earlier this month, several members of his team spoke on the record to the Washington Post, once again dispelling any rumors of intoxication and explaining several compounding issues: vocal fold trauma; a torn lat (latissimus dorsi, a back muscle connected to arm movements) from a concert in Australia that was re-injured during rehearsals in Milwaukee; the pressure of headlining a massive international tour. “I don’t think anyone really understands how big of a weight that is for any artist to have to make that decision as in his case, just his touring footprint alone is roughly 150 people, 250 if you include opening acts and their personnel, too,” his agent, Austin Neal, told the paper. “He thinks a lot about the fans, the folks that rely on him for a living and the ripple effects from any major decision.”

On Thursday night, Wallen found himself in the familiar position of acknowledging the elephant in the room and then burying it. After the video controversy, his concerts became, as the New York Times music critic Jon Caramanica put it, a return to a “safe space” – vague allusions to growing up and becoming a better man, gratitude for the fans who stuck with him, no acknowledgment nor discouragement of those who have adopted him as an “anti-woke” avatar. Wallen’s public presence since then has been notably apolitical and inoffensive, largely sticking to the music’s charms of small hometown pride, nostalgia and drinking for all feelings.

Thursday’s Chicago show added a note on the postponement. “Well, six weeks ago, I wasn’t really sure when I was going to be able to sing again … but we back!” he told the cheering crowd. “And with all the naysayers, all the haters, all that – I’ve seen some of that. But I see more of y’all’s support, so I could not make it through without everything y’all do for me so thank you.” At one point during the show, he donned a Cubs jersey. He signed hats, strutted the stage, delivered his signature twangy growl, brought out the Black rapper and occasional collaborator Lil Durk.

“Low refund rates and high streaming numbers,” was how Neal described feedback during Wallen’s vocal rest to the Post. “Morgan Wallen fans support him.” Thursday’s show marked a return to form and more of the same.