Morgan Wallen's 37-track break-up album leaves a bad taste

Telegraph

16-05-2025

Recording artists of the world – a plea. No matter the extent of the torment you're going through, no one – not fans, not critics, not vinyl pressing plants – needs a 37-song break-up album. Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, the gold standard of the genre, was 10 tracks long and it was perfect.
A bit of restraint would have been particularly useful in the case of US country megastar Morgan Wallen's fourth album I'm The Problem, a record that clocks in at three minutes shy of two hours. Warren has form in releasing very long albums: his 2023 LP One Thing at a Time was 36 tracks long while his 2021 album Dangerous lasted for a relatively sprightly 33 songs. But the issue with I'm The Problem is its monotony of pace. It comprises track after track of mid-tempo meditations on relationships, lots of which are highly-polished country-pop but some of which are jarringly bitter in tone. Wallen might be the biggest country music star in the world, according to Billboard magazine, but a little judicious editing – and a spot of levity – was perhaps in order.
Tennessee-born Wallen is country's breakout star. As of last year, he was second only to Taylor Swift in the US in terms of streaming and chart-topping dominance. Last July the 32-year-old became the first country singer to ever headline the BST festival in London's Hyde Park. Of the tracks on I'm The Problem that he's already released, three went to number one on Country radio in the US while six have reached the top 10 of the main Billboard Hot 100.
His commercial power lies in his mixing of traditional country music tropes (his love of America, a Bourbon 'n' beer lifestyle) with modern production sensibilities, from á la mode trap-inspired beats to indie guitar hooks and wafty atmospherics. There are nice nuggets aplenty here. His duet with rapper Post Malone, I Ain't Comin' Back, is a perfect slice of mass-market pop. Smile is a simple ballad in the Ed Sheeran vein. And LA Night sounds tailor-made for woozy 2am post-barbecue singalongs in downtown Nashville. It's great stuff.
But, my goodness, some songs leave a bad taste. Wallen's not happy with someone. The opening, title track features the chorus 'If I'm the problem, you might be the reason'. The second song, I Got Better, goes 'I got better since you got gone' and features a line about an unnamed person convincing Wallen that his mother was the devil. By song seven, Falling Apart, he's full of regret and sleeping on a couch.
Yet track 18 is a revenge track called Kiss Her In Front Of You (as in 'I can't wait to…'). Which is classy. Some of the bile is directed elsewhere. Come Back As A Redneck sees Wallen wish that city-dweller from his state who rolls his eyes at his beat-up truck comes back as the aforementioned redneck. 'Both our tags say Tennessee, But I don't know you and you don't know me,' he sings. There's too much division and blame on this album. Is this today's America in aural form? I might pass.
There are 49 songwriters on this album, and Wallen co-wrote 22 tracks, whittling down a final 50 to the album's 37. It's a ballsy move in this era of miniscule attention spans for an artist to go so large. But I craved less. As track 34 approached, a lyric from earlier in the album sprung to mind. 'Who do you see when your eyes are closed?' Wallen asked. I see you, I thought. And you're still singing. James Hall
Also out
Pete Doherty, Felt Better Alive ★★★★☆
'It's an odd expression,' Peter Doherty has said of the title of his third solo album, Felt Better Alive, 'because how does it feel to be dead? But in a strange way, I think I know.'
Few would've laid money on Doherty, who first ascended as a joint leader of East London's chaotic early-'00s indie-punk miscreants, The Libertines, ever reaching the ripe age of 46, as he did two months ago – particularly not at the height of his terrifying, tabloid-documented drug addiction in the late '00s.
Since 2019, against all expectation, Doherty has reputedly been fully cleaned up, and some of Felt Better Alive's 11 songs offer heart-warming insight into his newly reformed existence in a rural village in Normandy, where he now resides with his first wife, film-maker Katia deVidas, and their two-year-old daughter, Billie-May.
On song Pot of Gold, he comically portrays the trials of trying to write songs while Billie-Mae clamours for his attention: 'Hush my darling, no, don't you cry,' he softly croons over violins, 'daddy's trying to write you a lullaby.' In a further encouragement to be quiet that'll resonate with any home-working dads in Doherty's fanbase, it goes on: 'And if that lullaby is a hit, Dad can buy you lots of cool sh-t'.
If that one offers a window into the domestic reality of his first experience of cohabitational parenthood (he was estranged from the mothers of his first two kids), other tracks reflect the community he's joined in northern France.
Opener Calvados celebrates the apple-based spirit he has seen being brewed in his home village, according to homespun methods handed down over generations: again over thrumming acoustic guitar and violins, he glimpses 'a farmer's wife, picking her teeth with a pocket knife,' who then 'takes down the bottle, pours herself a tiny splash of the serum from the sacred orchard's soil'.
Such dewy-eyed pastoral reflections on the reassuring certainties of tradition are a far cry from The Libertines' electric rock 'n' roll rabble-rousing, last heard on 2024's chart-topping All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade.
Though you might almost imagine that Felt Better Alive was recorded in a remote Normandy barn, it was actually made at the Libertines' studio within their Albion Rooms hotel in Margate, with sometime Baxter Dury producer Mike Moore, who also serves as guitarist in Liam Gallagher's live band.
Doherty has revealed that they approached Gallagher Jr to sing Out of Tune Balloon, as he imagined its whimsical appropriation of kids nursery rhyme Chicken Licken as a silly-surreal Beatles tune like Octopus's Garden – ideal for Fab Four superfan Liam, but he was busy, most likely rehearsing for that impending Oasis stadium tour.
Another daft song, about forgetful misplacement, Fingee, recalls more a mid-20th century actor/comedian such as Bernard Cribbins, and it's enjoyable to hear Doherty flexing his knockabout sense of humour, while losing none of his open-hearted vulnerability.
Whether Pot Of Gold's lullaby or any of Felt Better Alive is exactly hit material by 2025 standards is hard to say, but it's wonderful to hear this wayward hero sound so happy to be alive. Andrew Perry
Best New Songs
By Poppie Platt
Blair Davie, Butterflies
The Scottish singer-songwriter already has an Ivor Novello nomination (for Rising Star) under their belt, and this tender love song hints at a rich career to come; perfect for Lewis Capaldi or Alex Warren fans.
Bradley Marshall, Skin and Bones
Anyone lucky enough to be attending this year's Great Escape festival in Brighton should check out promising Irish singer Bradley Marshall tonight – this latest track, all thumping percussion and lifting verses that are just begging to be yelled back by a live audience, has a serious Mumford & Sons vibe about it.
Jehnny Beth, Broken Rib
Formerly of popular post-punk band Savages, Jehnny Beth's latest single will suck in any listener who holds powerful vocals and pummelling instrumentals in equally high esteem – fast, furious and raw, it hints at terrific things to come on her forthcoming record You Heartbreaker, You, out on August 29.
La Dispute, I Shaved My Head
The Michigan hardcore favourites return with their latest contribution to the soundtrack for the apocalypse: I Shaved My Head is a cynical welcoming of humanity's doomed fate ('I'll build no ark for myself / I long for end times coming'), firmly in the vein of their brilliantly angst-ridden 2008 debut, Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair.
Lola Young, One Thing
Almost guaranteed to take the charts by storm, the latest single from Messy hitmaker – and homegrown British talent – Lola Young is an irresistibly cocky anthem about sexual empowerment and going after what you want: whether that's breaking the 'bed and then the sofa' during a night of passion with a new lover or, in Young's case, landing another Number 1.
Morgan Wallen and Tate McRae, What I Want
Country superstar Morgan Wallen attempts to brush his SNL controversy (after he stormed off stage in a strop) under the carpet with the release of his new album I'm the Problem today; What I Want marks his first collaboration with a female artist, the rising Canadian star Tate McRae. Whether it will match up to the world-conquering success of last year's I Had Some Help, his duet with Post Malone, remains to be seen.