Morgan Wallen has a scold

(It's me, but I'm not sure where that gets either of us)

Morgan Wallen struts through a darkened loading dock outside Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin. A steadicam operator leads the way, capturing his good side. The megastar is aware that he’s being perceived right now, that it’s time to put on a show, to perform a specific form of cock-sure ebullience. He’s dressed in a blue trucker’s hat and a crisp short-sleeve button-down, less an actual mechanic’s outfit than a rich man’s fantasy of one. The hat, its bill bent just so, is emblazoned with a vintage Field and Stream logo. He’s chosen an objectively perfect number of buttons to leave unbuttoned. He looks like a million bucks.

“I’m having the time of my life,” “I am so goddammned good at this,” “I am the most famous man in the world.” All this is communicated wordlessly, via pogoing, via hands in the air, via knowing looks to the steadicam, in the manner of an NFL cornerback who just deflected a would-be touchdown pass.

Speaking of NFL stars, the camera zooms out to reveal one from the recent past, matching Wallen step-for-step. The capacity crowd, following along on the Jumbotron, erupts in recognition. It’s Brett Favre. Years removed from his days as a Sconnie superhero. More recently revealed to be a cartoon villain (what other term is there for a rich White Mississippian who literally steals from poor Black Magnolia State grandmothers?). But tonight, the people have spoken. They don’t care. Perhaps they never cared. Perhaps they resent having been asked to pretend as if they cared. The point is that he’s a famous person, which means that Morgan Wallen is an even more famous person. Favre exists tonight solely as proof of concept, whereas Wallen is here to rip the roof off the place, because what the hell matters any more, am I right? The quarterback and the chart topper dap each other up, and then go their separate ways. Tonight, they’re both heroes, but the stage is only big enough for one of them.

If Morgan Wallen found out that I (a nobody, a non-factor in his life) consider him to be a cipher for this socio-cultural moment, he’d probably shake his head and call me a dork. He’d call me worse than that, actually. A word that begins with F maybe. Or R. But only if there weren’t any cameras around. He’s learned that lesson, at least.

I don’t think he’d mean anything by it. That’s what he’d say, anyway. Man, just lighten up. Don’t take it too seriously. Why write ponderous essays anyway? Who do you think you are? Some wanna-be woke professor. People don’t want any of that. They want songs about drinking whiskey and riding four wheelers through what is either “God’s country” or “exurban Knoxville” depending on who’s telling the tale. Songs about how, sure, you made some mistakes in your last relationship, but so did she. They want podcasts about how men are from Austin and women are from the Ballerina Farm Instagram feed. They want a President who may be a real piece of work, but who at least lets you say what you want. They want to toss some corn hole and power through a case of White Claw and just have a chill time. And what’s wrong with that, by the way? Whom amongst us wouldn’t prefer that to a life of affected self-seriousness?

Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t actually know Morgan Wallen. You probably don’t either. By that, I mean not only that you don’t know him personally, but that there’s a very real chance that you’ve never even heard his name. Oh wow, if that doesn’t say something about this moment. Wallen is, arguably, our most successful living male recording artist. Maybe Kendrick Lamar has him beat in cultural impact, but definitely not at the charts. But because all contemporary culture is balkanized into micro-managed fiefdoms, he might not have breached your particular algorithmic gates.

Even though Morgan Wallen Inc. is a massive corporate concern, the man himself exists in a permanent state of interchangeable beige anonymity. That’s by design. “Which country bro is he?” you may be asking yourself. The answer is yes, that one. Do you know what a Morgan Wallen song sounds like? It sounds like the kind of song you’d hear on the radio. And so that, in turn, is where he lives. On the radio. And more importantly, on a million Heatseeker Playlists. Doesn’t matter the genre. Country. Pop. Hip hop. His music sounds like something you’ve heard before, something you neither loved nor hated but to which you once danced at a wedding. There are steel guitars (sometimes) and 808s and trap beats (more frequently). His music is 2025 Nashville by way of pre-millennium Atlanta basements and whichever Stockholm musikgymnasium birthed Max Martin. Throw some jet age Brill Building in there too. Wallen’s songs won’t change your life, but they sound good enough when your 4 Runner pulls up to the beach.

I’m not hating, mind you. Not fully at least. You’ll never catch me slandering a well-crafted pop song. Credit to Wallen for figuring it all out. How to make vaguely pleasant aural wallpaper in Costco-sized quantities (my guy has so many songs, way more than you’d expect). How to leverage a legitimately pretty voice and a God-gifted ability to wear the absolute hell out of a ball cap. How to recognize that, in America, there will always be market demand for a fine looking White boy raised on Black music. And sure, the White boy’s got a rascally streak, but ladies, you could fix him. You see him winking in your direction? Elvis shimmied so that Jimmy Page could shake and Eminem could scream and Morgan Wallen can swagger onto a stage, give an incongruously coy shrug and yell “MADISON, WISCONSIN, HOW WE FEELIN’ TONIGHT, BABY?”

If you have heard of Morgan Wallen, chances are you’ve encountered the parts of his biography that make for a particularly unwieldy Wikipedia CONTROVERSIES section. Those slurs I hypothesized earlier? He’s said worse. On mic. A slur so verboten, even in Trump’s America, that it warranted a full-on apology to the entirety of Black America. The temporarily contrite party boy pledged to learn and grow. He made some donations and recorded songs with rappers and strode out on stage with all manner of Black co-signers. He has paid his debt, if not to society than at least his PR team.

That was his most infamous misstep. The slur one. But there are others. He seems like a reckless drunk (my guy has a bit of a checkered history at celebrity-owned downtown Nashville watering holes), and a generally pompous enfant terrible (most seriously, he flouted mask protocols during the pandemic; less seriously, there’s a whole Saturday Night Live subplot that is deeply tiresome in that famous people ego-clashing way). I’m not hiring him to babysit my kids any time soon, and also I hope he finds peace.

Like, ahem, certain other contemporary figures, what’s interesting about Wallen’s controversies isn’t that they exist, but that they never have any discernible impact on his career. Quite the opposite. Maybe he too could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue, only to sell even more records.

More seasoned academics and music journalists have tried to parse this seeming paradox. Not the fact that a pretty White boy gets away with some dirt (that’s a tale as old as time), but why this one? Why not somebody with more technically impressive songs or lyrics that might inspire the Writer’s Workshop crew to perk their head up at whatever Iowa City bar it is they all hang out at? Why not the reincarnation of Nelson or Haggard or Harris or Lynn? Why Wallen, a knuckleheaded runner-up on The Voice with toned arms and an enviable skincare regimen but otherwise very few distinguishing characteristics?

And that’s where the socio-cultural cipher of it all comes in. Sorry Morgan, it’s true. I may be an insufferable dork, but that’s really the whole shooting match. Yes, Wallen is Teflon, just as Trump is (was?) Teflon. But not just because he’s a media savvy White guy with money to burn. It’s because his whole shtick is, basically, “man, why do you gotta be like that? Making a big deal out of stuff that just ain’t that serious.” There was a time when Morgan Wallen was just another Music Row wanna-be. His rocket ship to fame took off in 2021. Not a coincidence, that timing. That was a big year for “come on, why don’t you leave us alone?” America. After the lockdowns. After (in many places) the masks. After the marches and the corporate commitments to match rhetoric to action. After us haters were given a few scant months to tell “real Americans” what to do, but before we were put in our place.

Morgan Wallen wins because the most powerful force in the maintenance of American political and cultural hierarchies has always been people who aggressively declare that they’re “just not into politics.”

Seriously, just try to level a blow against Teflon Wallen. It’s not that you’re wrong. It’s that he and his defenders have a ready-made retort. The better formulated your argument, the more proof that you’re a busy-body nerd who seriously needs to chill out.

“He’s racist,” [“Man, that’s what you woke scolds always do. Play the race card. Didn’t you hear him apologize? And he hasn’t done it again, right? And he’s got so many Black friends. Don’t you see?”]

“He’s a drunken menace” [“Oh, so literal rock stars aren’t allowed to have a good time all of a sudden?”].

“He’s not real country… Beyonce is. Or Sturgill Simpson. Or Zach Bryan. Or Wyatt Flores or Kacie Musgraves or Willie or Loretta or the Carter Family and…. [“Oh my God who cares. Country music fans like his music, way more than they like whoever you just named. Get a life”].

None of these counter-points are persuasive, but that’s not the point. They aren’t meant to be. They’re meant to create a permission structure for a stadium full of fans to turn their consciences off for at least a couple hours. What was that Melania jacket again? “I don’t care, do u?” “Seriously,” the stadium screams, in between a yelped-along chorus of ‘Last Night,' “maybe the jacket has a point.”

You know what Wallen’s latest album is called? “I’m the Problem.” That’s delivered with a wink, mind you. The title track isn’t a confession. It’s an accusation. A pretty familiar one, in fact.

I guess I'm the problem
And you're Miss Never do no wrong
If I'm so awful
Then why'd you stick around this long?
And if it's the whiskey
Then why you keep on pullin' it off the shelf?
You hate that when you look at me, you halfway see yourself
And it got me thinkin'
If I'm the problem
You might be the reason

I don’t know man, whatever. Lots to parse there. A rich text, as we like to say, us scold-y eggheads. But if only it were true that our sole societal ills were dumb, unrepentant pop country bros who revel in being dumb, unrepentant pop country bros. As it is, that’s issue 5000 on the list. So congratulations Morgan. I don’t think you’re the problem, at least not in a unique sense. It’s more like you’re the challenge. Or better yet, you’re emblematic of a challenge far bigger than you or me.

---

This past weekend, our family went camping with some good friends. We have four children between us, ranging in age from four to twelve. From the moment we pulled up to our campsite to the moment we pulled out again, covered in bug bites but pleased with time well spent, all four adults remained in a state of perpetual motion. We kept kids fed and entertained and away from poison oak. We checked and re-checked squirmy bodies for ticks. We wearily discussed the state of both the world and our shared Title I school. We bemoaned attacks on Access Universities and Federally Qualified Health Clinics. We compared notes on the constantly shifting puzzle that is toddler-to-adolescent parenting. We had a great time, but we were never off the clock. Was this community building? Was it just the endless busy work of two separate nuclear families with young children? Either way, a terrific weekend.

One camp site over, there were three young couples having a very different weekend. Big time Morgan Wallen fans, as evidenced by recently purchased concert t-shirts and a fair number of those songs, the catchy but weightless ones, played from cell phone speakers. They were considerate enough, in that they didn’t yell or shout curses, but they weren’t particularly friendly (would they say the same about us? I tried to say hey, I swear). Most of all, they were just drunk and sedentary. They’d wake up, make a fire, break open a fresh case of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, and toss the empties onto what eventually grew into a leaning tower of aluminum, frucose and malt liquor. Occasionally they’d smoke some weed. At one point, one of them told a very long story, the plot of which that in his frat he was the only guy with a fake ID, and that ruled.

And listen, I’ve got nothing against that crew. Or I want that to be the case. I don’t know them from Adam. They could be decompressing from a week of fundraising for Gaza aid and volunteering with an ICE watch. Maybe they recently organized a neighborhood What’s App group and host intergenerational game nights. Who am I to assume that they spend every day in a haze of drunken escapism? And even if not, that doesn’t make them bad people. They don’t earn their leisure only if they’re about that solidarity life. I mean, don’t I understand the desire, to run away from it all? To knock back a case of cold ones with the boys? Isn’t that, too, a form of community-building?

I’m just jealous, aren’t I? That, at least for this weekend, they had no visible responsibilities (offspring or otherwise). That I wasted my twenties in my own cycle of addictive behavior (nonprofit professional ambition, far less romantic than whiskey drinkin’, but far better on the liver). That I go to bed, quite frequently, still wracked with guilt over how little I’m actually doing in the world. To paraphrase the bard of our time, perhaps if they’re the metaphor, then I’m the problem.

I too wish, in my most tired and self-pitying moments, that we didn’t have to care for each other. That the siren call of the multimillion dollar good ole boy entertainer was the only message we needed to hear. Chill out, man. Stop worrying about everything. What can you do about it, anyway?

But that’s the challenge of our day, isn’t it? To lean into the friction of one another’s company. To say out loud, to friends and strangers alike, that it feels like too much, and we understand the desire to just ignore each other, but what if we didn’t? I’m not really jealous, you see. I don’t actually want a life where I lose myself in a pile of empties, where I flood the eroded channels that might connect us in a stream of hard lemonade and feigned coolness. I want the joy and heartbreak of interconnection, of at least trying to parse through the next right thing together. I want somehow the work we do with each other today to result in a different reality tomorrow. I want that for myself and, while I fear this sounds patronizing, I want it for that crew in the camp site next to me.

I missed an opportunity with them. And it probably wouldn’t have come to anything. A hard pitch wouldn’t have worked, that’s for sure. They wanted to party, not navigate a bunch of questions about life these days from the nosey dad next door. But I didn’t really even try to talk to them. I didn’t pause in front of their camp site and offer something as benign as “man, pretty great weekend, where are you all from?” I assumed they were a lost cause without giving them the dignity of rejecting my entreaties. It was easier to imagine them as being permanently lost to the narcotizing inertia of not giving a crap. And there’s no use in beating myself up there. A livable future for all does not hinge on me building community with those six specific twenty-somethings. But there’s something to notice, in how much I can’t stop thinking about them. I won’t take every chance to say “man, it’s pretty awful out there right now, how are you all doing with it?” but I clearly want to do it more often.

I’m still not impressed by Morgan Wallen. I tried to give his music a chance. Some of it’s all right, but it doesn’t grab me enough to make me a true believer. Other folks seem to like it, so let’s say that in this case, I’m the problem. But also, it seems like he’s got some growing up to do. So here we are, Morgan. You and me. An unstoppable force and an immovable object. I bet you’re gonna get way richer than me but, I don’t know, every week I meet a new person with a kind heart and questions on their mind, so my life ain’t so bad either.

I am jealous of one thing that Wallen gets to do every night. It’s when, long after he’s run on stage in a whirlwind of ego and self-regard, he hears the crowd drowning him out, singing louder than his thundering amplifiers. I hope he notices, in that moment, that he’s neither the problem nor the point. The stadium isn’t actually filled for him. If he didn’t exist, somebody else would take his place. All those people wanted to be together. And they may claim, in that moment, that all they just wanted a good time. But it seems notable that, in pursuit of escape, they didn’t run away from each other. They merged together.

We’re a mess of a species, but we always seem to do that, don’t we? Run back to each other. Wonder about the ones who got away. Daydream a hazy future where there are fewer strangers.

End notes

1. I made this pitch to free subscribers above, but it’s been an expense-filled month around these parts (merchandise shipments, guest essay compensation, fees, etc.). Add that to the normal late-month churn of folks who need to end their subscriptions or have billing failures, and at this point we’ve spent more money than we’ve earned on this little operation in July. Obviously I’m not trying to get rich here, but this is my day job and so if you find it valuable, this would be a really meaningful moment to chip in. Thanks for considering, and if money’s too tight for that, a nice share goes a long way as well.

2. Speaking of guest essays, we’re taking a break from the movie series but look forward to some fun stuff coming soon (this Booksmart essay I’ve commissioned is going to be an absolute delight).

3. Hey! Are you in the Twin Cities or environs? I’m speaking to one of my favorite local organizing groups anywhere— the Southwest Alliance For Equity in Minneapolis. When? Literally tomorrow night. Thursday, July 24th at the Meraki Community Space (100 West 46th Street). 7:00-9:00 PM.

4. Next week is my last session with the summer Barnraisers crew. If you’re part of that group, just know that you all have been the best. I’m taking a break from new Barnraisers classes in August, but we’ll be announcing new stuff in the fall. Are you on the interest list? I think you should be.

5. To any Milwaukeeans (and particularly Riverwesters) reading this: Happy 24 weekend! The People’s Holiday! I’m going to be working the start-finish line in the middle of the night and otherwise riding around (maybe in a Bluey onesie? we’ll see). Context here, if none of this makes a lick of sense.

6. Again, the new Wallen record is fine (so much filler, but there are some hooks), but my favorite country album of the year so far (“is it country?” the Internet yellers argue, about this and literally every other country album) is Jessie Murph’s Sex Hysteria, especially the first track, “Gucci Mane.” Want to hear an absolute nuclear bomb drop of an album opening couplet? “I”m from Alabama/I’m ‘bout 4’11”/I’ve got a shitty father/and I’d like to go to heaven.” And then it builds from there!

   The full song of the week playlist is on Apple Music and Spotify.