In January, country star Morgan Wallen had one of the biggest months of his career. His second album, Dangerous, debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 and broke country streaming records on Spotify and Apple Music, and he’s had prime placement in outlets that don’t always pay much attention to the genre, like The New Yorker and The Washington Post. The 27-year-old’s recent success meant that a Tuesday TMZ story with the blaring headline “Morgan Wallen Hurls N-Word After Rowdy Night Out, Apologizes, ‘I Promise to Do Better’” was primed to reach an audience that was only just getting to know him.
In the internet era, we’re used to seeing similar headlines with the word “resurfaced,” because the behavior happened in the past, in a tweet or comment from before the person entered the public eye. What makes the controversy seem so unusual is that the video is recent. On Sunday night, he was caught by a neighbor’s doorbell camera as he returned home from a night out in Nashville. In the video, Wallen and a group of his friends can be seen honking horns and yelling, before a neighbor records a second video, where Wallen is heard calling someone in the group a “p****-ass n*****.”
TMZ released the footage on Tuesday with a limp apology from Wallen. “I’m embarrassed and sorry. I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back,” he said. “There are no excuses to use this type of language, ever. I want to sincerely apologize for using the word. I promise to do better.” Nevertheless, the backlash came swiftly, and other country musicians, including Kelsea Ballerini, Mickey Guyton, and Maren Morris, spoke out against him within hours. By Wednesday afternoon, iHeartRadio dropped him from its radio playlists and Variety reported that Cumulus had too. CMT tweeted that it was “removing his appearances,” and Big Loud records announced his record contract had been suspended and that Republic Records, which partnered with Big Loud on Dangerous, “fully supports” its decision.
The quick reaction was surprising because Wallen has long been supported by Nashville. His first big break came when he appeared on The Voice back in 2014, and he released his debut E.P. in 2015 and scored his first number one country song with 2018’s “Whiskey Glasses.” He only made the jump to mainstream superstardom last year, when his enthusiastic posts to TikTok helped a few of his songs go viral, and launched his hit “7 Summers” to the top 10. Wallen was poised to be one of the first Nashville–supported country acts to have a major pop impact since Taylor Swift.
At the same time, it’s just one scandal in a long line of them; after the news broke, Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos tweeted that she has now heard more apologies from Wallen than songs. Last May, he was arrested for public intoxication outside of Kid Rock’s bar in Nashville. (The case was settled.) In August, he made headlines when his performance on Saturday Night Live was canceled, after videos emerged of him flouting the show’s COVID protocols at an Alabama bar. But despite country’s reputation for advocating family values, those scandals didn’t harm his career, and ironically the SNL boot might have actually raised his profile. He didn’t complain about the consequence and later discussed how he felt inspired to be a better father to his son, Indigo, who was born in July. When he finally made his appearance on the show in December, he skewered his own past mistakes in a light-hearted sketch with Jason Bateman and Bowen Yang.
Wallen had developed a reputation as a self-aware Southern dirtbag who was safe for everyone to embrace, but the TMZ video explodes that facade. Racial slurs have come to represent a third rail in American life, the one thing the elites can agree makes you a racist. It’s not like Wallen’s political sympathies were too mysterious before this—he complained on Instagram when he saw people celebrating Joe Biden’s win in November—but he generally refrained from making any overt political comments.
It seems pretty clear that Wallen might still be able to eke out a country music career without any image rehabilitation. If he is really craven, he might even lean into it, and, say, record a cover of “Take a Knee, My Ass (I Won’t Take a Knee)” or go on Tucker Carlson. But that would demolish any chance he still has of keeping mainstream attention. Before Tuesday, Wallen was aiming for the level of stardom you can only maintain if people aren’t constantly reminded of your failings.
But it’s just as easy to imagine things going in the other direction. With a more sincere apology, some strategic donations, concrete actions to curtail his public drunkenness, and a genuine engagement with Black life and politics in America, he could make a comeback. Despite what some may tell you, few people enjoy the idea of “canceling” someone. But by and large, music lovers don’t want to be lied to and don’t want to support artists who reflect the things they abhor. Country music, an industry notorious for being dominated by white people and often accused of being a bastion of misogyny and patriotic chauvinism, will send a strong signal with how it responds, as a whole, to Wallen’s situation. The early response from mainstream country music institutions and a tongue-lashing from country-radio figurehead Bobby Bones are steps in the right direction.