Morgan Wallen has met the girl of his dreams; he has fucked up considerably and lost her forever; he is drowning his sorrow in whiskey; he feels the spark of new love; he pledges to change his miserable ways. The 29-year-old Tennessee native’s music portrays life in this never-ending cycle, and at each point along the way, he’s got all kinds of bumper sticker slogans, frat-brotherly advice, and heartfelt apologies to bestow upon his enormous fanbase. Lucky for them, these thoughts arrive to him in great, bountiful harvests so that all his albums are incredibly long, resulting in a thick catalog of frothy, familiar country anthems, spilling forth like a bursting keg to flood the Billboard charts.
After the release of his second album in January 2021, the 30-song Dangerous: The Double Album, Wallen’s hyper-prolific strategy merged with his gruff, reality-show nonchalance (he first found an audience as a contestant on The Voice) to cement him as the crossover country star of the young decade. Then a month later he got caught on video using the n-word while stumbling home drunk over the weekend, and he quickly became something even bigger. Despite the public fallout and some short-lived repercussions (he was disqualified from the Grammys and placed on temporary hiatus by his label), Dangerous became the year’s most commercially successful release, tying a record set by Whitney Houston during the Reagan administration. As of this week, more than two years later, it’s still hanging around the Top 5 albums.
Through it all, Wallen’s attitude has been this: What is the absolute least I can do? There was, in quick succession, a requisite apology tour that included a direct-to-camera vlog posted on Instagram, some talk of charitable donations, an interview on Good Morning America, and a collaboration with Lil Durk. All the while Wallen seemed mentally fatigued and physically uncomfortable, as if the most important lesson he learned from his experience was that a lot of people are watching and it’s best not to make any sudden moves. Recently, the most engaged he’s seemed was an hour-long podcast appearance with his collaborator and friend Ernest Keith Smith, where they mostly talk about working out and their high school baseball careers. When Ernest asks what Wallen did as a teen to inspire his polarizing reputation on the ballfield, Wallen gives a knowing smirk as he chews his Skoal: “Just doin’ the same thing I would do today.”
Herein lies the key to Wallen’s music. So much of his appeal—and any country artist on his level—comes down to convincing the world of their inherent confidence, the distinctness of their personality and unwillingness to change. You love them because you know them, and you know them because they know themselves. “I take a lot of pride in what I am,” sang Merle. “Blame it all on my roots: I showed up in boots,” yodeled Garth. “I was around some of my friends, and we just… We say dumb stuff together… I think I was just ignorant about it,” hedged Wallen.
I imagine the importance of Wallen being true to only himself was a bolded instruction for all 49 co-writers on his latest album, One Thing at a Time. This focus group was seemingly assembled to craft the most true-to-Wallen reflections of his Tennessee realness and repentant heart in the wake of—Note to collaborators: please keep this part as vague as possible—all the mistakes people make in this crazy world. The mistakes we all make.
Part of Wallen’s self-knowledge means understanding that nobody wants to hear him tackle institutional racism or Southern history and trauma in his music. From the beginning, he’s gravitated toward balmy love songs suited for the pleasant hum of a car radio or a Bluetooth speaker on a camping trip; it was his lackadaisical, sepia-toned worldview that made him stand out on breakthrough singles like “7 Summers,” where qualities like flow and mood were more important than writerly specifics, nevermind real-world commentary. Consider this: The most narratively intricate song on this record is called “Single Than She Was,” an ode to barroom flirting complicated solely by the fact that, interestingly enough, this girl already has a boyfriend.
And so the word through Nashville is that Wallen needs a boatload of very catchy, very vague, very laid-back songs about screwin’ up and makin’ amends. Also he’s newly sober! Or, at least when he’s on tour. Well, mostly. A trio of hired guns offer a tune called “Water Into Wine,” which features this touching lyric: “Baby, I just hope you’ll forgive me/I’m tipsy, come kiss me by the time it’s empty.” The heartfelt “Whiskey Friends” lands on this note of introspection: “Looks like I did it again, me and my stupid mouth/I dug myself into a hole in the wall... and I gotta drink my way out.”
Yes and yes, Wallen says, more like this, please. And so the album becomes what feels like five hours of music, all circling the same verse-chorus orthodoxy and covering the same thematic territory. So much apologizing. So much drinking. (If you wonder why there’s a song called “Keith Whitley,” close your eyes for five seconds and try to think of a brown beverage he could rhyme with the “Miami, My Amy” singer’s last name.) “What do you expect from a redneck/Hell, I was born with a beer in my hand,” he sings in the album’s first—and best—chorus, and this is a moment of uplift, not self-pity. He understands his expectations and he’s grateful for them. This is his comfort zone, his kingdom.
Thirty-six songs is too many. I know it, you know it, and I’m willing to bet Morgan Wallen knows it as well. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say he doesn’t want anyone to listen to this record in its entirety, and the length has less to do with any particular vision than spawning as many hits as possible, for as long as possible. Even then it’s kind of a slog. There are some tracks that take a more pared-down approach, with minimalist rhythms and acoustic fingerpicking that accentuate his gift for delivering tugging, bittersweet pop melodies. There are some couplets clever enough to catch you off guard. Meet him on his level and you sometimes remember how he charmed so many listeners in the first place. In “Single Than She Was,” he takes an itinerary of all the things he was able to do with that girl before her boyfriend showed up, which includes giving her a taste of his drink and dancing to Semisonic (unless he’s referring to the “Closing Time” by Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen).
Needless to say, none of this leads to anything interesting enough to change how you think of Morgan Wallen, let alone earn back any of the goodwill from his New Yorker interview days. Not to mention, he seems to have lost a great deal of energy as a singer and performer, leading to a ton of uninspired retreads and some truly generic filler. (Do you think his backing band even remembers cooking up the microwaved Southern rock of “Last Drive Down Main”?) Even the album title seems to acknowledge that Wallen considers this a transitional moment. As on The Voice, he knows it’s up to the audience to decide what happens next. By the sound of it, his lack of agency comes as a relief. And from the continuing success of muted singles like “Last Night” (imagine: acoustic Chainsmokers) and “You Proof” (as in “I need something you-proof”), you can see why he’s not sweating it.
In that same conversation with Ernest, Wallen comes as close as he ever has to acknowledging the dire consequences of repeated bad behavior. It comes in the form of a parable about his childhood dog, a white German Shepherd who disappeared after developing a habit for terrorizing the chickens on a nearby farm. “I think I’m pretty sure what happened to it,” he says, shifting his eyes ominously. The first time the dog came home covered in blood and feathers, he says, the neighbors let him off with a warning. “Just don’t let it happen again.” A few days later, when it happened again, they sent his dog away to “Papaw’s farm,” where, having acquired a taste for blood, it immediately killed another dog. And then? “I think I know what happened to that dog,” Ernest interrupts in a booming drawl. Wallen lifts the bottle to his lips and spits and shrugs to signal the story is over.
