Background and career
Morgan Cole Wallen (born May 13, 1993) is an American country pop singer from Sneedville, Tennessee. He first gained recognition as a contestant on the sixth season of The Voice in 2014. After signing to Big Loud, he released his debut studio album, If I Know Me (2018), which reached number one on the US Top Country Albums chart and featured his breakout singles "Whiskey Glasses" and "Chasin' You". Wallen's second studio album, Dangerous: The Double Album (2021), became the first country album to spend its first seven weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, while his third studio album, One Thing at a Time (2023), spent 19 non-consecutive weeks at number one. Its third single, "Last Night", topped the Billboard Hot 100 and the Year-End Hot 100 chart of 2023. In 2024, he featured on "I Had Some Help" with Post Malone, which became the first song to simultaneously debut atop the Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs charts. His fourth studio album, I'm the Problem (2025), debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and produced nine top-ten hits on the Hot 100, including the number-one singles "Love Somebody" and "What I Want". Wallen has been praised for his cross-genre appeal and cultural impact. He has received several accolades, including an Academy of Country Music Award, fourteen Billboard Music Awards, and won Entertainer of the Year at the 58th Annual Country Music Association Awards. Wallen holds multiple Billboard chart records: He is the only artist to have two albums spend at least 100 weeks in the top ten of the Billboard 200, the only artist to have two albums spend at least 10 first-weeks atop the Billboard 200, the artist with the most weeks at number-one on the Top Country Albums chart (187), and his single "You Proof" is the longest-running Billboard Country Airplay number-one of all time, with ten non-consecutive weeks atop the chart. He also holds the record for being the modern country artist with the most Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits, with four.
Morgan Cole Wallen was born on May 13, 1993, in Sneedville, Tennessee, to Tommy and Lesli Wallen. Tommy served for a time as a local church pastor, while Lesli worked as a teacher. In his teens, the family moved south to Knox County, where he attended Gibbs High School. He was a pitcher and shortstop for the school's baseball team, and hoped to continue in college, but tore his ulnar collateral ligament his senior year. As a child, Wallen took piano and violin lessons and developed a diverse musical palette, largely due to his father exposing him to classic rock mainstays. During his teenage years, his tastes expanded toward rock bands like Breaking Benjamin and Nickelback, alongside hip-hop artists like Lil Wayne. Wallen has characterized his early adulthood as adrift; he worked in landscaping after graduating from high school and was disappointed by his inability to continue his baseball career. He returned to music as an emotional outlet and began teaching himself guitar at age 18. Around this time, he fell in love with country music, specifically modeling his burgeoning sound after the lineage of Keith Whitley and Eric Church.
In 2014, Wallen competed on season 6 of the music competition program The Voice. He auditioned with the song "Collide" by Howie Day. Judges Shakira and Usher complimented his stylings, and Wallen joined Usher's team. He was later taken by Adam Levine's team after his second round, and later eliminated during the playoffs. Wallen later said of his experience on the show, "Some things in life are out of your control. Being the best you can be isn't. I didn't feel like I was the best I could have been. So I practiced harder". The Voice was instrumental in raising Wallen's profile, and he began to establish connections in the music industry. While in California to appear on The Voice, Wallen began working with Sergio Sanchez of Atom Smash, a vocal coach on the program. Wallen relocated to Nashville to further his career, and he and Sanchez started a temporary band: Morgan Wallen & Them Shadows. Sanchez introduced Wallen to Bill Ray and Paul Trust of Panacea Records. In 2015, Wallen signed to Panacea Records where he was joined by Dominic Frost on guitar and released the Stand Alone (EP) on August 24, 2015, which was later certified Gold. "Spin You Around" was Wallen's debut single under Panacea Records; it was later certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2025.
In 2015, Wallen's manager, Dirk Hemsath of Working Group Artist Management, sent a demo of Wallen to record executive Seth England, who had Wallen audition for Big Loud, an independent record label. They signed Wallen to the label and the publishing company, who began pairing his songs with other artists. That year, he released his debut single "The Way I Talk"; his first music video for the song followed in 2017. Wallen co-wrote A Thousand Horses' single "Preachin' to the Choir", Dallas Smith's "The Fall", as well as Jason Aldean's "You Make It Easy" with Florida Georgia Line's Tyler Hubbard, Brian Kelley, and Jordan Schmidt. He joined Florida Georgia Line on their Dig Your Roots Tour. He collaborated with the group on the single "Up Down", his first song to reach the top five of Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. At the outset of his career, Wallen underwent a personal stylistic shift, adopting a distinctive mullet and a look that Kelefa Sanneh, profiling Wallen's rise in a piece for The New Yorker, described as "Everyman rock star" and "not just a singer but a character". Wallen had decided to adopt the retro hairdo after seeing a younger photo of his father with the cut. Wallen's debut studio album, If I Know Me, was released on April 27, 2018, with its third single, "Whiskey Glasses", becoming his biggest success yet. The song reached the top spot on both the Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts; it also marked his first top 40 appearance on the all-genre Hot 100 ranking, where it placed at number 17. It was Billboard's 2019 top Hot Country song and Top Country Airplay song. Sanneh characterized "Whiskey Glasses" as his signature song and a "perfectly constructed ode to a woman and a drink, lost and found, respectively". In 2019, Wallen joined Florida Georgia Line on their Can't Say I Ain't Country Tour. His next single, "Chasin' You", was serviced to radio in July 2019 and peaked at number two on the Hot Country Songs chart; like its predecessor, it captured the top spot on the overall year-end tally for 2020. In August 2020, If I Know Me reached No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart after a record-breaking 114 weeks.
Wallen's profile continued to rise, with a growing following on platforms such as TikTok, and he developed into an unwitting sex symbol. Wallen appeared on the cover of Billboard, whose headline read: "Is Morgan Wallen Country's Next Global Star?" In October 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple videos were posted on TikTok showing Wallen ignoring CDC guidelines in bars and other locations in the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, area after attending a University of Alabama football game. As a result of this, Wallen's appearance as the musical guest on that week's episode of Saturday Night Live was cancelled; he ultimately performed in an episode two months later hosted by actor Jason Bateman, in which Bateman, Wallen, and several cast members parody the incident and resulting fallout. At the start of the pandemic, Wallen had more time to write and record material, which developed into his sophomore album, the double-disc Dangerous: The Double Album (2021), which showcases a mix of country and R&B/pop balladry. Dangerous was an immediate blockbuster: it debuted atop the US Billboard 200 and the Canadian Albums Chart; it would remain atop the Canadian chart for four consecutive weeks, and the US chart for six consecutive weeks, marking the first new album from a country artist to do that since Garth Brooks' The Chase in 1992. The album also would become just the third album to spend its first ten weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 and the first in over 30 years since Whitney by Whitney Houston. Its singles—"More Than My Hometown", "7 Summers", "Sand in My Boots" and "Wasted on You"—were record-breaking hit songs that pushed Wallen farther into the national conversation. "7 Summers" earned him his first top 10 on the Hot 100, debuting and peaking at number 6, and was also chosen by Time as one of the best songs of the year. Wallen soon became the first artist to ever chart 6 songs within the top 10 of Hot Country Songs chart at the same time in the week after his album's release; likewise, the album charted 23 tracks on the Canadian Hot 100, and 19 tracks on the Hot 100 in the US.
On February 2, 2021, TMZ released a video recorded on January 31 showing Wallen saying the racial slur "nigger" to one of his friends after a night out. He issued a statement shortly after and apologized. Several radio stations temporarily removed Wallen's music from airplay on their stations, and his songs were removed from Apple Music, Pandora and Spotify featured playlists. CMT and the Country Music Association removed Wallen's appearances from their platforms, and his record label Big Loud (and partner Republic Records) suspended its recording contract with him indefinitely. The Academy of Country Music announced that Wallen and the album Dangerous: The Double Album would be ineligible for the 56th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards. On February 10, Wallen shot an apology video in which he asked his fans not to defend him. In April 2021, Wallen donated $300,000 to the Black Music Action Coalition in the names of 20 people who had counseled him following the incident. Those individuals were given the option to funnel their respective $15,000 donations to a charity of their choice, or keep the money within the BMAC. Wallen publicly spoke of his comments on Good Morning America on July 23, where he said that "I was around some of my friends, and we say dumb stuff together" and said that "I was wrong" to use those words. Wallen's songs returned to country radio in August when his single "Sand in My Boots" was released. He was nominated for Favorite Male Country Artist and Favorite Country Album for the 2021 American Music Awards, but was not invited to attend the ceremony, and was consequently unable to accept any awards if he won, which he did not. In the week following the controversy, album sales of Dangerous surged. In some cases, the physical as well as digital album sales went up over 100% in the week following the controversy. He remained atop the Billboard charts for seven more weeks; If I Know Me even entered the top 10 for the first time. Over the ensuing years, Dangerous remained a juggernaut; Ben Sisario, writing in The New York Times, dubbed it "an unusually enduring hit". It has continued to break chart records: it was the best-performing album of 2021, and in 2022, the album broke the record for the most weeks in the top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart among albums by a solo artist, surpassing a record set a half-century before. Dangerous was awarded Album of the Year by the Academy of Country Music; Wallen also won Favorite Male Artist and Favorite Album at the inaugural Country Now Awards.
