Morgan Wallen’s star has been rising incredibly quickly over the past few months – winning the CMA for New Artist of the Year and releasing his acclaimed sophomore album Dangerous – but now, as news has spread of the emergence of a video in which he utters a racist slur, Nashville’s doors are quickly closing against him. Is this the end for Morgan Wallen?
2020 seemed set to be Morgan Wallen’s year, after the success of his single ‘7 Summers’ and ‘More Than My Hometown,’ a date was set for the release of his double album Dangerous in January and a slot was booked for SNL. However, in the summer he made headlines when news emerged of him partying with college girls – as the pandemic raged – not adhering to any safety guidelines. After withdrawing from the spotlight for a few months, he made his comeback and made his way back onto SNL (not without jokes being made at his expense) and this January saw the release of his record that shot to the #1 slot on the Billboard chart – the first to do so for three weeks since Taylor Swift’s Red in 2012. Today, however, news emerged of a video in which Wallen utters a racist slur. As a result of which, Wallen’s music has been removed from more than 400 US radio playlists, Spotify’s Hot Country and Apple Music’s Today’s Country and his music has been removed from CMT amongst other outlets, as media hastens to reassure their fans that they neither tolerate nor condone anyone shown to be holding values counter to their own values. Though the singer has issued a statement apologising and saying ‘I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back,’ his contract with his label has been suspended indefinitely. After the mammoth success of Dangerous, it remains to be seen whether Wallen will manage to worm himself back into Nashville’s good graces or whether those doors are shut for good. If the views of his fellow artists are anything to go by, it seems unlikely, with Maren Morris, Kelsea Ballerini and more drawing the line between themselves and Wallen, with Morris stating before the news from Wallen’s record label ‘Big Loud’ broke that ‘we’d be dropped, endorsements lost, social pariahs to music row..,’ echoing views circulating that had Wallen been a woman he would have already been dropped long ago. Where country music has been doing its utmost to prove internationally that it has progressed beyond the white male-dominated genre it has always been known as, this is the moment where Nashville has taken an overt stand to draw a hard line between the past and future, and it is hopeful that this is not a change for the moment but for the long-haul. If Wallen is to have a career after the backlash against him has died down in the media, then he is going to have to do a serious PR campaign, showing his growth in order to be a representative for the genre both nationally and internationally. It is only by doing this that he will be able to begin to show that he has changed sufficiently to meet the country music genre as it is today, rather than what it used to represent.
The news out of Nashville tonight does not represent country music.
— Kelsea Ballerini (@KelseaBallerini) February 3, 2021
