Morgan Wallen’s Identity Crisis – ryan

On his fourth album, I’m the problemWallen gestures at Saying His Worst Is Being Him while Defending a REMAIN A LITTLE WILD.
Photo: Will Heath/NBC Via Getty Images

SINCE 2020, COUNTRY FIREBRAND MORGAN WALGEN HAS EKTEATED Spins Through a Cycle of Assure US THAT THE SINGS ABOUT ISN’T RUNING HIS LIFE, THAT HE’S TIGHTENING UP. All the while his twangy, raft-infused pop-rock winks at an audience entothralled by the underlying vibe in the Stories About Him That Make Tmz – Like Escaping The Snl End-of-Show Cast Mingle to Get Back to “God’s Country”-that the 32-YEAR-OLD TENNESSEE SINGER-SONGWRITER DOES? Wallen’s SEEMINGLY ENDLESS Tap of Bittersweet songs of regrets still him to millions, but the Trouble informing the universality of the project. “I’ve Spent the Last 11 Months Trying to Figure Out, ‘Do I Still Want to Be the Problem?’ I’m the problem. Its Cover Art Resembles His Real-Life Courtromoom Sketch: Last Year in April, Wallen was arrested after drunkenly tossing a chair off the roof of a downtown nashville bar; Portraits of the artist at his disorderly Conduct sentiment yield the same worked middle-dystance stare and cream-colored walls. For the listens primed to respect Outlaw Signifiers, His Intermittent Rule Breaking is Humanizing and Authenticating. But others who priza decency and stewardship hope for a figurative (or literal) come-to-life moment, while People of Color Wonder Why they Should Trust Him. The Behavior That Excites One Subset Susses Another, and Wallen’s Career Has Become One of Minor Adjustments and Penance Seeking as he continues to break records by garth Brooks in the ’90s. Grace is good for Business.

Wallen’s Fourth Studio Lp is the Textbook Performance of Soul Searching From A Country-Chart Fixture Who has just caught a case. Problem Unpacks a tripartite dilemma: Wallen got dumped. He’s Also Grown Tired of the Predicability of His Own Hits. And now his rap sheet the self-destructive abandon in his songs feel too real and even close to dark sagas of alcohol abuse in country music for comfort. These Conundrums Thread ThroughOut an album Trying to Create Some Distant Bet The Singer and the Swashbuckling Mind-Set of 2023’s One thing at a timeWhere 35 of 36 songs Touched on Drinking. But Wallen’s Writing Continues to Trace Similar Plotlines. A Breakup Begets Drinking, Which Begets Faith-Sted Remorse That Wallen English to Mold Ino Maudlin Nuggets of Radio Cross-Pollination, Reminding You He Gray Up On Lil Wayne and Nickelback. Conflicted, Wallen gestures at Saying His Worst Is Being Him while Defending a Remain a Little Wild. The songs trying to showcase maturation are equally apprehemous about leaving Old formulas Bebind.

Problem‘s intersecting inconsistency bunch up in songs like “Miami,” a late-album yarn about randomly grabbing a Florida, Feeling out of place, and nearly falling in love. Wallen’s Tune Samples The 1985 Keith Whitley Song ”Miami, My Amy”A year -in Ballad About pining for a call a Woman he met on the southeast coast. In Problem‘s’ miami,’ whitley chirps in the background of a story about not wanting to be tied down romantically and hating the city as a self-identifying Redneck. The Drake-Aj is is bound to ruffle purist Feathers for employing whitley as a chipmunk chorus on an r & b-trap ode to milling around miami boking for a hookup. “I already know i’m gonna get crucified for that song,” Wallen Told Kelleigh Bannen on Apple Music’s TODAY’S COUNDRY RADIO. But the real affront is his invocation of his predecessor’s name as a Shorthand for the worst outcome for his own badits. “I’m crashing, i’m burning,” Another song Called “Revelation” opens. “I’m Whitley on the Bourbon.” HIS LAST ALBUM’S ”Keith Whitley“Celebrated the Music of the Kentucky Star, who died at 34 from alcohol poisoning, and paired well with Wallen’s Drining and Pining. This New Lionization of Whitley UNRAVELING ITCHES. Problem Exudes a Feeling that Wallen Very Much Enloys the Behavors he’s meant to be rebuffing. The Darkest Cuts are “Kick MySelf” and “I Got Better,” Stately America Tracks About How Strange It Feels to Change Your Ways; Each Relay Palpable Despair With The Semi Syed Coming Across in the Songs About Acting Out in Bars.

Figering out how to estabish a sense of self that is less overly tied to bar brakes, while also cataloguing the parts of yourelf that you have to have to leve in maturity, is relative. Wallen Gets the Idea Acoss in the Catchiest Means Posible, Having Assembled A Group of Notable Rock, Pop, and Country Engineers. Joey Moi (Who Produced Nickelback’s “Photograph”) WORKS WITH CHARLIE HANDSOME (“Go Flex” and Mac Miller’s “Weekend”) and Southern Country Singer-Stickers Ernest and Hardy to Smugene Boundween Everyone Wallen Approaches with the Same Chad Kroeger – Inspired Yowl. Its Too Restrained, TaSteful for the Ruddy Subject Matter. The Snare in Wallen’s Trap Approximations Rarely Smacks Outside The Tate Mcrae Team-Up “What I Want“Whita What Florida Georgia Line and Bebe Rexha’s” Meant to Be “Had. Wallen Told Comic and Podcaster Theo von that he and his fans are” tired of Hearing “rafts now, but a spattering of Problem Songs Beg to Differ. Problem isn’t bringing more ideas to the table, Only angling to come on mess Drunk and with mess hip-hop affect. Wallen is a reaching the same crossroads his bo-Country predecessors Florida Georgia Line Faced A Few Albums in Wen, Likely Sick of Complaints About Dabbing in R & B, the duo made a folkier push. Rap is all too too Too the Childish Thing the Modern Country Singer Feels he must set aside and is done sowing proverbial oats. Shucking the pretensation of Blackness is received as homecoming. IT FEELS DISCONCERTING, Transactional, and Counter to a Modern Uptick of Black Listening and Performers in Country. Problem Highlights The Ideological Inconsistence of the Small-Town Tennessee Singer-Stonger who Despises a Coastal Metropolis but loves to dip in the cadres of Rappers who live in say. Wallen Can’t Decide Whether He Preferences The Tepe and Pure Country Apostasy of the Whitley Flip or the Rustic Reflection of “Got Better,” Just as he seames rectant to eather a heartbreaker routine or a self-imovement regimen.

“Superman“Begins as a touching meditation on how Wallen’s Son Will Feel? Window into HIS Family Life with “Stand Your Ground” Boilerplate. But the 37-icy Problem Has Beaten Every idea half to death by the time you get there. With 49 Writers Involved, Gratingly Simplistic Catch-Frase-Seeking Couplets Pack An Almost Two-Hour Ride with Wan Clichés About Emptying Bottles. These couplets are Where Wallen Sounds Most convincingly over Himself, though: “I know there’s some things that drinking doesn’t Change / I kep drinking til it does,” “Drinking til it does” announces. “Drinking in Reverse” Dreams of the Power to Un-Drink Whiskey. Like Drake, Wallen is in a Lucrative Holding Pattern where the News and Songs About HIS WORDS HOEED HOPE HE CAN STAY ACPETable of Incorrigility while Continuing to Meet the Professional Obligations of the A-List terrestrial-Radio commodity. EveryWhere in Music, these incontongrouous Expectations breed inscrutable and immutable stars.