I think the honest reality is that people loved and cherished Wallen’s music in spite of the incident. It’s very common when it comes to consuming art you will enjoy the music that means most to you, even if the person you’re listening to doesn’t support your values. And that’s not a judgment on you or your character at all. Hell, I would bet money that some of you reading this right now are still listening to Kanye West. Red Hot Chilli Peppers consistently make rock fans’ favorite albums of the year, even years after their peak (feel free to look up what “Catholic School Girls Rule” is about if you don’t know what I’m talking about). Chris Brown has a song in the Top 20 right now. It’s not like Wallen is the only shitty person getting streams despite past transgressions. It’d be easy to assume those sales came from listeners who were either racist themselves or totally cool with casual drops of the n-word, but again, I find that way of thinking unproductive. A lot of Wallen thinkpieces about the incident mention how his sales and streams actually rose despite being completely cut off by the industry, and that’s primarily because people really did like him that much. But he’s making them a lot of money by being the first country artist in years to actually appeal to a younger audience, a demographic Nashville has STRUGGLED to capture. Wallen is a young, reckless alcoholic who sleeps around with college girls and idolizes gangsta rappers whom Nashville wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Morgan Wallen did not make Nashville look good, even before the incident. Especially if you’re on the rise to becoming Nashville’s golden ticket into finally getting back into mainstream pop culture after decades of being irrelevant in the conversation of popular music. No extreme politics, no calling out sketchy shit happening within the industry (Brothers Osborne outright implied one of their singles was sabotaged by their label during their Grammys speech), hire black artists to appear progressive but keep them making the same safe, calculated fluff that the white artists make, and most importantly, no embarrassing scandals. Point is, Nashville likes artists who make them look good. But giving them the big awards and getting them to make emotional speeches at these shows makes them look good, and fools people into thinking “maybe Nashville isn’t racist/homophobic/bigoted after all”! Then they invite outed transphobe and Trump supporter Jason Aldean to the stage to play his latest recycled garbage. Mickey Guyton hasn’t had country radio success at all despite a very agreeable sound and many friends within said industry willing to support her. In reality, Brothers Osborne hasn’t had a radio smash hit since their breakout song “Stay A Little Longer”. Artists like Mickey Guyton or Brothers Osborne whom the industry claims to love. If you’re one of the ten people who watch the CMAs or you pay attention to the country categories at the broad awards shows like the Grammys, you’ll notice a lot of these people who get a ton of awards and speeches about being “accepted” by Nashville regardless of race or orientation. Nashville has done their damndest to prove to the world they’re really growing and thriving as an industry. Mostly because I find a lot of the discussion around it to be really… unproductive? For as many thinkpieces you can make about how Wallen was not only able to bounce back from what should’ve been a career-ending mistake, but become a superstar on the same level as Drake and Taylor Swift, ultimately we’re going to reach the same conclusion we’ve known this whole time: the music industry doesn’t care if you’re a bad person, just if you make them look good. At least, not in regard to The Incident and everything surrounding it. I wasn’t planning on writing about Morgan Wallen again. The dream didn’t kill him, he killed himself.” But this is his mess, and he has to live with it. I hope he can cite this moment in time as a turning point and begin the process of being a better person. Either way, I hope he never lives this down. They can pretend this shit doesn’t matter, they can roll their eyes and move on to someone more deserving of his platform, they can forgive him on their own terms, whatever. As soon as he does all that… well, that’s up to his listeners to decide. To knock it off with this shitty behavior, to seriously self-analyze why he felt the need to use that slur and how he can better himself to break away from this hideous part of himself, to control his drinking habits (or preferably go sober), and actually live up to his apologies instead of using them as a shield to build up his soft side. “So if he ends up sticking around, what I hope is that Wallen takes this as a hard wake up call. From the first proper post on this Substack: “The Tragedy of Morgan Wallen”
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