You could chart the rise of Morgan Wallen, the first major country star of the twenty-twenties, by keeping track of all the apologies he has issued over the past year and a half. “My actions this past weekend were pretty shortsighted,” he said, in the fall of 2020, after he was photographed, maskless, in an Alabama bar and was subsequently denied a planned appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” (He was finally booked on “Saturday Night Live” two months later, and played a sheepish version of himself in a sketch set at that Alabama bar.) He issued a more serious apology this past February, a few weeks after the release of his blockbuster double-album “Dangerous,” when he was captured on tape using the N-word, seemingly in reference to a friend of his. “I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back,” he told TMZ. He was removed from country-radio playlists and award shows; he issued more apologies and mainly stayed out of sight.
But Wallen’s music never went away: “Dangerous” stayed at the top of the album chart for ten weeks after its release, the longest such run since Whitney Houston, in 1987; by one metric, it was the most popular album of 2021 in any genre. By last summer, Wallen’s songs were making a quiet return to country radio stations, which are in the business, after all, of giving country fans what they want. Wallen’s long-awaited headlining tour was scheduled to begin last week in Indiana, but the initial concerts were postponed—not by the pandemic or a racial slur but by a winter storm, for which Wallen, once again, apologized. (“I’m sorry for the hassle, but I can’t wait to see y’all next time,” he said.)
And so, after a year that was both eventful and oddly uneventful, Wallen finally emerged, seated at a keyboard and rising on a platform onto the stage, at Madison Square Garden, on Wednesday night, ready at last to begin a tour that is scheduled to keep him on the road for the next several months, assuming (as perhaps one shouldn’t) that nothing goes wrong. The ovation was loud enough to make him stop playing so that he could work the stage like a professional wrestler, pumping his fist, slapping outstretched hands, and cupping his ear for more applause. And then he spent nearly two hours playing the songs that have built him such a loyal fan base. If Wallen got a bit less precise and a bit more shouty as the evening progressed, that was just one more thing he had in common with his fans. “A lot of people tried to keep us out of this state,” he declared at the end of the show, not long after trying to toss a red plastic cup into the crowd. (He succeeded on his second attempt.) “But we are here, and we ain’t going nowhere!” It was a defiant performance—on this night, at least, Wallen was unapologetic.
Like most great performers, Wallen is more subtle than he first seems. At the Garden, he was dressed like a guy ready for a rowdy night in a rural bar: boots, sleeveless flannel, tight jeans with a Skoal-sized bulge in the back pocket. “I just wanna do country-ass shit / With my country-ass friends / With my country-ass band,” he sang, sounding happy to be simultaneously making a wish and fulfilling it. But all the bravado camouflages a singer and songwriter who excels at evoking romantic melancholy. “This is one of my favorite songs I ever wrote,” he sang, introducing “Wonderin’ Bout the Wind,” about a woman who won’t stick around. He wrote that song with the emerging singer and songwriter ERNEST, who also appeared as a special guest. The two sang an acoustic version of their new duet, “Flower Shops,” a weepy country ballad in which Wallen enlarges the genre’s considerable arsenal of memorably miserable couplets: “Well, I took some pills, and she took the dogs / Aw, it’s all gone to hell, she’s gone to her mom’s.”
Similarly, Wallen is more of a cultural hybrid than he may first seem. His insistence on his “country-ass” identity may cause some listeners to overlook the the hip-hop-inspired beats and phrasing that help make his country songs sound contemporary; like not a few rappers, he sometimes delivers lyrics in a nimble but under-enunciated drawl, hinting at the rhythm instead of hammering it. And, before he took the stage, the Garden speakers blasted his comeback single from last year: “Broadway Girls,” a collaboration with the excellent Chicago rapper Lil Durk. “Broadway Girls” is far from the best song in either guy’s catalogue, but it’s a great example of the way that musicians and listeners alike sometimes recognize kindred spirits in unlikely places. “He ain’t no racist—that’s my boy,” Lil Durk told TMZ, last month.
Even so, Wallen remains a polarizing figure. To his fans, he seems like a survivor, having endured temporary banishment from “Saturday Night Live,” and then a more serious banishment last year; many of them doubtless feel that a stray epithet should not be enough to derail a career, especially if it’s swiftly followed by an apology. And, outside his fan base, plenty of detractors remain: they view Wallen’s apologies as insufficient or insincere, and they view his recuperation as a sign that country music hasn’t yet changed as much as it should—that it remains, even now, a distinctively white genre, and therefore distinctively hostile to nonwhite singers. One of Wallen’s most popular songs is his version of “Cover Me Up,” by Jason Isbell. Last month, after Wallen appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, Isbell suggested that the decision to put Wallen onstage would “break the hearts of a legion of aspiring Black country artists.”
The Wallen scandal erupted shortly after I interviewed him for this magazine, and I watched its progress while working on a different project: a book about the history of popular music, focussing on the way musical genres have fostered (and, in turn, been fostered by) tribal antagonism. Often, over the decades, loving country music has meant setting yourself apart from those who don’t get it. Even now, it seems that part of the fun of doing “country-ass shit” is the notion that plenty of other people don’t know how, or wouldn’t dare to try. And Wallen’s concert was not just a highly entertaining show but a tribal experience: a jubilant red-state rally in the heart of Manhattan. When the fans weren’t cheering or singing along, they were chanting, “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” or “Let’s Go Brandon!,” even though nothing Wallen said or sang was overtly partisan. It was an atmosphere of joyful truculence, and it added to a sense that Wallen matters, and inspires loyalty, because he’s not just any singer—he’s a country singer. Probably now more than ever.
