Music Review: Morgan Wallen's 'I'm The Problem' will be everywhere. Buckle up
NEW YORK (AP) — Morgan Wallen says he's the problem. And soon, he'll be yours.
The country megastar's fourth studio album, 'I'm the Problem,' will be everywhere imminently if it isn't already — just like his earlier records, the last of which outsold Taylor Swift. It is a collection of earworm hooks and twangy big belts about whiskey and women, the kind that has made Wallen unignorable.
The 32-year-old's incredible popularity is at least partially due to the hybridity of his style. Bro country and dirt-rock evolved into his final form, which embraces hallmarks of hip-hop: trap high hats and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony-inspired vocal phrasing. That appears throughout the gargantuan 'I'm The Problem," everywhere from the 'Interlude," 'Kiss Her in Front of You" and 'Miami' to tracks like 'What I Want,' featuring the Gen-Z Britney Spears Tate McRae. The latter marks his first time featuring a woman vocalist on one of his songs, no doubt a bucking of country duet tradition but also a doubling down of his vocal style — warm, muscular, masculine.
The album is never revelatory, but there are surprises: like the Bon Iver-channeling 'Smile.'
Wallen's also a traditionalist — in the weeping guitars of 'Falling Apart,' the backroads balladry of 'Skoal, Chevy, and Browning," where chewing tobacco and hunting gear has never sounded so ... romantic? Most of his songs deal with heartbreak and self-deprecation with lyrical specificity and a total lack of pretension, appealing to both a fluid listenership and country radio loyalists looking for something familiar enough.
In full, 'I'm The Problem' is 37-tracks, running nearing two hours long. It's exhaustive but only exhausting for the active listener — just like his last two, which also topped 30 tracks. His style hasn't detoured too much from his previous work, giving new credence to not fixing what isn't broke. The album plays out like a soundtrack to a road trip, effortless and pleasant background music.
Then, of course, is the financial incentive: Longer albums equate to more streams, and streams often account for far more of an album's chart position than downloads and purchases. It's good business.
All that aside, everything Wallen does, including the release of this new album, is inextricable from his controversies. Despite them — or perhaps, partially because of, for a certain subset of listeners interested in bad boys with real talent — Wallen has become one of the biggest performers in the United States, underestimated by a mainstream music media that often regionalizes country music culture.
And there have been a number of controversies. In 2020, he was arrested on public intoxication and disorderly conduct charges after being kicked out of Kid Rock's bar in downtown Nashville. In 2021, after video surfaced of him using a racial slur, he was disqualified or limited from several award shows and received no Grammy nominations for his bestselling 'Dangerous: The Double Album.' He's currently under supervised probation after pleading guilty to two misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment for throwing a chair from the rooftop of a six-story bar in Nashville and nearly hitting two police officers with it.
Regardless, his last album, 'One Thing at a Time,' was certified seven-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. It held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 100 for 16 weeks in 2023. That's just over 30% of the year. 'One Thing at a Time' then reemerged in 2024 to hold the spot for three additional weeks in 2024. Presented another way, the album broke Garth Brooks' record for longest running No. 1 country album. In that respect, Wallen is not just a superstar in his chosen genre, but any genre.
Redemption is a theme across 'I'm The Problem,' which is given additional weight by Wallen's extramusical behaviors. Earned or otherwise, when Wallen sings he does so with the wisdom of a wizened man. Like in 'Superman," written for Wallen's son Indigo, which directly references the father's past indiscretions.
'One day you're gonna see my mugshot from a night when I got a little too drunk,' he opens the song. 'Hear a song about a girl that I lost from the times when I just wouldn't grow up.'
It's unclear if that growth has happened. (And considering the rest of the album's hungover revelations and soured relationships, subjects Wallen knows intimately and has made a career off writing to, it seems unlikely.) But if Wallen is singing to his son in the future, he's singing to himself and the millions who will be listening in the present. And clearly, they're willing to take the journey with him.
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