Photo: Terry Wyatt / Getty Images for CMA
“I think I got lost a little. I tried to find joy in the wrong places and … it left me with less joy. ”In a video message posted on Instagram in early October, Tennessee singer-songwriter Morgan Wallen looked pointedly at the camera for words to explain what a turbulent year was like – the one in which his 2018 debut album, If I know myself, it became platinum; his single “7 Summers” became a viral hit on social media; his son, Indigo, was born; it’s him Saturday Night Live the premiere would take place in an episode presented by Bill Burr – apparently he had gone off track. Photos of Wallen kissing strangers and partying without fans in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on a night when the UA Crimson Tide rinsed Texas A&M’s Aggies 52-24, caused the long skit comedy show to strip the country star of the episode of Burr and replace him with Jack White, citing a violation of the COVID-19 security protocol. It wasn’t Wallen’s first slip: in May, he was arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct after being kicked out of Kid Rock’s Tennessee honky-tonk bar and arguing outside when security guards asked him out, an incident that produced a police photo where the singer made the perfect party party look. A few days after the arrest, Wallen asked the IG to post a fragment of a song he wrote about the recent turmoil, a cheerful acoustic jam in which he feared he was losing control: “I don’t want to go downtown doing what we used to / Twist the lid off another round, hell, I have enough loose screws. ”Speaking to the Nashville radio personality, Bobby Bones, in the same week, the artist suggested that his reputation as a party planner had gotten the best of him.
“Dangerous”, the song about prison, became the title track for the 27-year-old’s second album, released this week, nestled between “Rednecks, Red Letters, Red Dirt”, a toast to the revitalizing powers of the church and the bar, and “Beer Don’t”, a country-rock ode to the cheery properties of cold beer parties. In Dangerous: the double albumWallen undermines the antics of the dawn that almost hindered his career in search of ideas – more than 30 thoughts on beer, bars, bartenders, whiskey and women – leaning on the moving image of barfly he created for himself and periodically talking about the price of wanting Be the life of the party. Dangerous it is also a powerful ploy for the kind of mastery of the successful charts enjoyed by Wallen’s colleague Voice alumnus Luke Combs, a smart and slippery collection of songs where noisy rock guitars, skillful Nashville production, bluegrass harvesting, traditional country whines and drum trap programming mix, the kind of place where Diplo is so good- come as Chris Stapleton, where a Jason Isbell song sits comfortably next to a song written with country radio killer Shane McAnally. More elegant than Stapleton and Eric Church, but a little more reverent to traditional country than Thomas Rhett’s last, with DangerousWallen seeks a precarious compromise by inviting all these colleagues (through guest vocals, co-writing or covers), and he often succeeds, although the narrowness of his subject may undermine the ambitious breadth of the sound he reaches. Where in If I know myself, the previously untested star was happy to duet with the pop-country hybrids Florida Georgia Line, here he is behind the keys to the kingdom.
With the help of hitmakers like Luke Laird, Michael Hardy, Rhett (and his father, Rhett Akins), McAnally and Ben Burgess, Wallen sharpens the pop intelligence and rock arrogance displayed on If I know myself to a certain extent, delivering songs that are melodious and reflective, sentimental and direct. In “Warning”, he wants bad idea connections to come with warning labels, like whiskey bottles. Longing for an ex at “865”, he suggests that he is experiencing her memory when he drinks. It is banal, but effective and understandable, full of catchy phrases that stick as much as the melodies that guide them. The best history songs abandon this universality in favor of talking about Wallen’s exclusive dilemmas. “More Surprised Than Me” is a song about the inability to shake people’s incredulous looks when he goes out with a woman who looks and dresses better, and how he does it because he also can’t believe she would choose him. “Livin ‘the Dream” is about feeling trapped by your rock star image, but understanding that there are a lot of people who would kill because of what he’s complaining about: “Between alcohol and women and Adderall and adrenaline, I never get rest / Sign my life to be the life of the party, yes, for everyone else. ”Wallen stops making songs of doom; he knows he is good and looks and behaves the way he chooses. He is just communicating that for every anger there is a violent hangover and explaining, as a new parent, how the life he has built for himself is physically and emotionally draining and in urgent need of restructuring.
There are not enough moments like this Dangerous. The double album is more concerned with reaching all the necessary emotional beats than other great clear pop country albums: city pride, hinterland in good faith, timid interest, regretful longing, drunk glory. In a four-song excerpt at the end of the album, he features three songs on the same subject, celebrating his Tennessee roots in “Somethin ‘Country”, “Country A $$ Shit” and “Whatcha Think of Country Now.” That’s where Dangerous proves its worth: Wallen steps on the tracks not only with perfect vocal control, but with a sarcastic lack of effort, employing double-time rapper streams in “Somethin ‘Country” (without the rigidity that made similar efforts by industry colleagues like Blake Shelton seem laborious in comparison) and leaning towards his southern accent while presiding over a home party scene in “Country A $$ Shit”. At the same time, his band diverts from an intricate acoustic interaction to large rock choruses with the ease of sliding down a road from an access ramp. They are firing on all cylinders: “Neon Eyes” and “Livin ‘the Dream” pay homage to the fast and heavy American from Fleetwood Mac. “Heartless” and “Warning” play the electric guitar loops that fuel Shawn Mendes’s greatest hits ; “This Bar” plays on Mumford’s folk-pop. “Need a Boat” revisits the love of bluegrass music that led Wallen to learn violin as a child, after the CMT-ready tearjerker “Me on Whiskey”.
Dangerous finds Morgan Wallen trying to be everything to everyone, propping his sound to the country audience, even when he is out of the genre. This balancing act is thorny; some fans of the original demo of the title track that exploded on TikTok didn’t care about the elegant and tasteful electric guitars added to the album version. Hours later Dangerous was released, fans appeared in the comments of a June IG video, where Wallen played “Wasted on You” alone on the guitar to beg him to release this version on streaming services, turned off by the waltz-synchronized battery trap that arrived at The album. Last year, at Diplo’s Snake oil, “Heartless” was a trap-pop jam that gained its country flavor with the singer’s accent; in Dangerous, is more like a cover of a big band adapted for stadium games. There are people who want Wallen to be the kind of romantic boyfriend who plays the guitar, singing songs that look like private conversations, and people who want him to become a country phenomenon, people who love his nighttime antics and people who think he needs to pull himself together . With Dangerous, Wallen communicates that he knows what everyone is saying and strives to keep them happy, landing, in the process, a flexible sound that mixes pop, rock, country and more with panache, a sound that, with ample opportunities, fails, it is often engaging and never anything less than fun. Having a second chance to prove himself, Morgan Wallen uses Dangerous to show everything at once.