PITTSBURGH — In early February 2021, which already seems like an eternity ago, Joe Biden had just taken office and was trying to pass a $1.8 trillion relief bill, people were scrambling to get the new COVID vaccine and Tom Brady was about to contend for his seventh Super Bowl ring.
Most Americans didn’t know Morgan Wallen from Morgan Freeman and may not have even noticed that he was in the process of being canceled.
Wallen, a former contender on “The Voice” who sings like he has a wad of tobacco in his cheek, had a No. 1 country hit in 2017 with “Whiskey Glasses,” a rousing single from his double-platinum debut “If I Know Me.” He’d been through Pittsburgh three times, across 2018 and 2019, in opening slots for Luke Bryan, Luke Combs and Florida Georgia Line.
During that stretch, the Sneedville, Tennesee, native, who performs at a sold-out Pavilion at Star Lake Thursday, was working on what would become the country album with the most consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard 200.
Leading up to that, he made a few headlines as the country bad boy, kind of like back in 2000 when Kenny Chesney got busted with Tim McGraw for the great Buffalo horse caper.
Wallen got himself a cock-eyed, hockey-haired mugshot on May 24, 2020, after being arrested at Kid Rock’s Honky Tonk in Nashville for public intoxication and disorderly conduct. According to the report, he was “kicking glass items,” much like the whiskey glasses he was seeing the world through.
Not only was he drunk AF, he was out partying during the first months of COVID.
Coming a mere three days before the release of the first single on the album, “More Than My Hometown,” it was a fun little way to make a headline. The single hit No. 1 on the Country Airplay chart.
Then, in October, a week before he was set to perform on “Saturday Night Live,” Wallen was seen on TikTok partying up at an Alabama bar after a football game and kissing girls at a house party, prompting “SNL” to postpone his appearance for violating the show's serious COVID-19 protocols.
When he was invited back in December, he was part of a skit, set in October, where Morgan Wallens from one and two months in the future (one of them, Jason Bateman) come to the Alabama bar to warn him about his freewheeling behavior.
What he really needed was a Morgan Wallen from THREE months in the future.
The word
“Dangerous: The Double Album,” released on Jan. 8, ran a whopping 32 songs over 100 minutes, including the bonus tracks, showing off his redneck charm, catchy hooks, breezy wordplay and scratchy backwoods vocals on drinkin’ songs, both hell-raisin’ and heartbroken.
"The 'double album' idea,” he explained in a statement, “started off as just a joke between me and my manager because we had accumulated so many songs over the past couple of years. Then quarantine hit, and we realized it might actually be possible to have enough time to make it happen.”
He added, “I know 32 (eventual) songs sounds like a lot to digest, but I truly did my best to make sure there’s not a song that I would press 'next' on.”
There are no 32-song albums without nexts, but anyway, it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with a stunning 264K debut week. A week later, it became the first country album to top the chart for two consecutive weeks since Luke Bryan’s “Kill the Lights” in 2015. Week three, No. 1 again.
You can just imagine the parties at Big Loud, his label.
Then, on Feb. 2. career apocalypse came when TMZ released a neighbor’s Ring video showing Wallen drunkenly calling to a friend’s girlfriend, hurling gendered and racial slurs.
The backlash was strong and swift. Within a day, his music was pulled from iHeart and Cumulus stations, Sirius XM, Spotify, Apple and Pandora, Big Loud suspended his contract and the Academy of Country Music declared him ineligible for its awards.
Morgan Wallen … canceled! End of story.
Or not.
This is country, not pop or Hollywood. And this was a word, not a sexual assault.
“So what is the penalty for using the N-word?,” industry insider Bob Lefsetz wrote in his newsletter. “Are you canceled forever or is there a specified amount of time after which we bring you back into the fold. The point here is we don't know! And if we just talked about it we could make headway, it could become clear, but it's off the table. Primarily because if you speak up chances are you'll get caught in the crossfire and be canceled too. You've got to agree with the group or you can't speak, you're not entitled to an opinion.”
Among the many negative responses to his piece: “... you may want to retract some of this, it doesn't sound great. Apologists for using the nword are not good looks.”
Donald Trump would have brushed it off as “fake news.”
Wallen took the other route. “I'm embarrassed and sorry,” he said in a statement. “I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back. There are no excuses to use this type of language, ever. I want to sincerely apologize for using the word. I promise to do better."
A marginal artist might have been cast aside for good, but what about a young cash cow with a mullet?
The so-called “deplorables” who populate the world of mainstream country didn’t care. They sent his album to No. 1 for a fourth week.
An appalled Jason Isbell, a sort-of hall monitor for the musical left, tweeted of Wallen’s impressive album sales, “So... A portion of this money goes to me, since I wrote ‘Cover Me Up.’ I’ve decided to donate everything I’ve made so far from this album to the Nashville chapter of the @NAACP... Thanks for helping out a good cause, folks.”
Wallen went to Instagram on Feb. 10 with a five-minute video apology, in which he explained, “The video you saw was me on hour 72 of a bender, and that’s not something I’m proud of.” He added “It’s on me to take ownership for this and I fully accept any penalties I’m facing” and noted that he had met with Black leaders and organizations, who had shown him “grace.”
Meanwhile, “Dangerous” sales kept surging: five weeks No. 1, six weeks, seven weeks — breaking Garth Brooks’ 1992 record for a country artist — on its way to 10 weeks.
Redemption road
After a year-plus of no concerts due to COVID, bands were ready to roll ahead for summer.
Wallen put the kibosh on that, posting a handwritten letter on Twitter in April 2021 thanking fans for supporting the album, expressing pride in his personal growth and revealing that he was bowing out of all touring, including festival dates and the Luke Bryan Proud to Be Right Here Tour.
A month later, though, he tested the waters a little, right at the scene of the (first) crime, Kid Rock’s Honky Tonk, where he jumped onstage with a house band to thrill a crowd with "Whiskey Glasses" and “Wasted on You.”
That same month, Pandora lifted the ban (slowly followed by others) and he won three Billboard Music Awards. He did a second impromptu live performance, after playing a charity golf tournament with Luke Bryan, and then a third with Eric Church, Hardy and Darius Rucker.
In his first interview, that July, Wallen withstood a proper drilling from Michael Strahan on “Good Morning America,” where, in a deadly sober tone, he explained that “I was around some of my friends, and we we say dumb stuff together. And it was — in our minds, it’s playful … that sounds ignorant, but it — that’s really where it came from … and it’s wrong.”
After that, he ducked away until October, when, right after being banned from the CMA Awards (where he was nominated), he announced he would be headlining three Country Thunder festivals, beginning in April 2022, and also play Kentucky’s Rupp Arena in December.
When they sold 36,000 tickets in 90 minutes, that was about it for the cancellation of Morgan Wallen. He ended the year with the top album of 2021 and the announcement of the 54-city Dangerous Tour.
Live and Dangerous
It was set to open in the Midwest, but those three shows were canceled due to winter storms, putting Wallen right in the heart of Manhattan for the opening at Madison Square Garden. The set opener was “Broadway Girls,” his collaboration with rapper Lil Durk.
Rolling Stone was there in February to say there were no protests outside. “Likewise,” it noted, “there were no Confederate flags being flown, no visible MAGA hats, no inflammatory signs — just a somewhat predictable sea of white faces, cowboy hats, and plaid shirts, plenty with their sleeves cut off. More than a few of the haircuts resembled Wallen’s lightly coiffed mullet.
“It was as if the uproar caused by his use of the n-word had all but faded.”
The conservative New York Post spin was that while Wallen’s critics try to paint the country world as racist, “The overwhelming majority of Americans despise racism while also rejecting the idea that those who utter the wrong word must be subjected to Cultural Revolution-style struggle sessions and then still be canceled.
“Whether or not you’re a fan of Wallen or country music, the fact that he’s still standing despite the concerted attempts to finish him is worth cheering.”
Not only is the “Southern drawl crowd” cheering, so are the promoters who are making bank on one of the hottest tours of the summer.
At last glance, resale tickets for the sold-out Star Lake were going for $325. That’s for the lawn. If you want to make it there, don’t even think of getting on Route 22 after work.
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