morgan wallen

https://www.newsweek.com/anti-woke-beer-costs-four-times-more-bud-light-1794319

this whole argument is pretty boring bcuz it's just an argument about strawmen and incomplete data. the fact of the matter is we have no idea at what rate his music would have grown if not for this incident. we have no opposite test case. it may be even bigger, who knows. like...

They do know that he was punished (songs taken off radio playlists, etc.) immediately after the video of him using the n-word came, though, and they responded by buying and streaming his music harder in response. ("The country music industry acted swiftly to publicly rebuke him and radio stations and streaming services removed his songs from their playlists. But fans responded by playing him even more.)

is it supposed to be significant that after the guy's songs were erased from the radio people sought out other methods of listening to his music? it feels like the most simple logic imaginable that streams and sales would increase after the other main method of distributing his music was erased overnight. the implication is that people were supposed to just pretend his music didn't exist anymore and his streaming numbers would fall off a cliff? this gets into fantasy land about how people consume art that they have affection for.

in any event, it's worth noting that DJP's post was about why people in this thread are listening to the music & not why morgan wallen's fanbase at large listens to his music, or whether they listened to his music more or after the slur. one topic is actually pretty interesting & doesn't rely on strawmen fictions of the imagination that exist in all of our heads about a group encompassing millions of people that, let's just be honest here, very very few to nobody in this thread is interacting w/ on a daily basis

we also have zero historical context for an artist at this level in the streaming era having something like this happen to him or her & what effect that has on how ppl consume the music. you have to keep in mind that we're at the most nascent stage of having data on just about every time the large majority of america presses play on a song. so we can throw all sorts of data out there but any scientist or mathematician (which i am not) would tell you that its significance -- at either end of the argument -- is speculative at best bcuz our context for this situation in this environment is minimal to nonexistent. the implication w/ the streaming data is that 1 play = 1 protest and i would really push ppl away from that idea, generally, bcuz i don't think it would be found to be rooted in fact

in any event, it's worth noting that DJP's post was about why people in this thread are listening to the music & not why morgan wallen's fanbase at large listens to his music, or whether they listened to his music more or after the slur. one topic is actually pretty interesting & doesn't rely on strawmen fictions of the imagination that exist in all of our heads about a group encompassing millions of people that, let's just be honest here, very very few to nobody in this thread is interacting w/ on a daily basis

Start donating to my Patreon; if the number gets high enough I'll go door to door out here in rural Montana and ask my neighbors for their Morgan Wallen takes.*

*do not send me money; I will not do this

ehh jordan I think you're being a little dismissive of the idea that americans being ok with an artist willing to throw around racist slurs has absolutely zero causation, pure correlation, with his own success, based on like, history

i think one thing the streaming era has proven is that any kind of elevated conversation at all surrounding an artist, good or bad, will correlate with an increase in streams. frank ocean's streams increased dramatically in the wake of his coachella disaster, as one example.

i do think that a certain segment of morgan's fanbase was energized by the incident, and not just the regular chuds

i never said there was zero causation & would not claim otherwise. i read the comments on IG and twitter posts about tory lanez & dababy i know there’s ppl out there who think that streaming music is a way to stick it to the woke mob. but what i am saying is that ppl are throwing out all this data as if it’s meaningful but we don’t know the motivations behind any of those plays, and more to the point we have little to no historical context for how to judge the fanbase’s reaction vis a vis other cases. it’s not rocket scientist shit to say that data has to have some context for it to be meaningful. i think we can all agree that *some* portion of those plays were a direct reaction to the backlash against him, but how many of them? nobody has any idea nor could come close to making an accurate claim on that number. everyone in here is staring at a jar filled with 160 million jelly beans and claiming they know exactly how many red ones are in the bunch. which is why i think this whole argument is pretty stupid in the end

I agree, and I think your point about streaming potentially increasing as a natural reaction to less availability of his music on the radio is a good one – though fwiw, the Billboard article linked in that USA Today piece tracks the change (on both fronts) in a single day (Feb. 3, 2021). It seems unlikely that all those fans suddenly noticed less of his music on the radio and ran to buy his albums that same day, but who knows.

ran maskless to the Tupelo Best Buy

Guess he got hoarse from shouting at this thread as it popped up on his phone:

Morgan Wallen will be taking some time off from singing. The country star posted a video to his social accounts explaining that he had been placed on vocal rest for six weeks and would need to postpone upcoming tour dates, citing “vocal fold trauma.” https://t.co/rN3rR5Zoc4

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) May 9, 2023

he's not very hot is he. country star for internet rednecks. i can deduce all that from one photo, i'm magic what can i say.

good luck on your fold

he's not very hot is he.

He looks like wet ham

Morgan smiled at me!

https://i.imgur.com/bun4sAU.jpg

i read the comments on IG and twitter posts about tory lanez & dababy i know there’s ppl out there who think that streaming music is a way to stick it to the woke mob. but what i am saying is that ppl are throwing out all this data as if it’s meaningful but we don’t know the motivations behind any of those plays, and more to the point we have little to no historical context for how to judge the fanbase’s reaction vis a vis other cases.

I agree but I think there's something else going on here; in the case of the racial slurs, it accentuates rather than undermines our image of the Real Country Artist so as I described above, I think the effect is that his use of the slurs operates, whether he wanted it to or not, as a Successful Marketing Gesture. Whereas DaBaby being homophobic seems to inspire paternalistic attitudes of white america which make up the bulk of american music consumers.

a group encompassing millions of people that, let's just be honest here, very very few to nobody in this thread is interacting w/ on a daily basis

i would argue my opinions are informed by many years of interacting with people like this and being related to them

The idea that no one’s interacting with potential Wallen fans is hilarious.

have you guys asked the morgan wallen fans in your life why they listen to his music still? you should do it and come back here w/ the answers, i'd be genuinely curious what they have to say

i'm about to embark on a diner tour to chat w/ them

Ask them if he reminds them of ham

i'm about to embark on a diner tour to chat w/ them

― dyl, Tuesday, May 9, 2023 4:18 PM (fifty-six seconds ago)

maybe while you do that you can have ppl explain to you the difference between florida georgia line & morgan wallen. you might actually learn something

I agree but I think there's something else going on here; in the case of the racial slurs, it accentuates rather than undermines our image of the Real Country Artist so as I described above, I think the effect is that his use of the slurs operates, whether he wanted it to or not, as a Successful Marketing Gesture. Whereas DaBaby being homophobic seems to inspire paternalistic attitudes of white america which make up the bulk of american music consumers.

― xheugy eddy (D-40), Tuesday, May 9, 2023 3:53 PM (twenty-two minutes ago)

i agree w/ you on that being the more interesting question but i think it's going over ppl's heads bcuz not that many ppl in this thread are actually engaged w/ the music

this is an artist whose entire catalog -- even w/in the context of country -- is notably, and strictly, about drinking, doing drugs, mistakes, and regret. his love songs are, at best, wistful, but generally regretful and sad. listen to i.e. "7 summers," "chasin you," "sand in my boots" ... the happiness, the stability is always in the rear view. a person is always running, a memory is always being chased. on a more literal level the number of songs in his catalog that link his emotions directly to drinking are myriad... and there are no songs that are just breezy fun songs about cracking a beer w/ the boys. even an upbeat, generally lighthearted song like "everything i love" on the new album ends this way:

I can't go nowhere near the whiskey
'Cause you used to drink it with me
In the bed of my truck
And now I can't get drunk
Can't you see what you're doing, girl?
You ruined damn near everything I love

the darkness that is driving him to drink and use drugs is never ever subtext in his music ... it is always the text of what he sings about over and over again. even before he was doing stupid shit in public, he was -- in my opinion and i think in the opinion of ppl who drove songs like "chasin you" and "whiskey glasses" up the charts before he was even a mainstream concern -- a uniquely good interpreter of this kind of material.

and he is existing in a world where authenticity is the no 1 currency in music bar none in any genre. why are summer walker, sza, and jazmine sullivan scoring no 1 albums while normani and chloe bailey are flops? bcuz ppl want real stories, they want mess, they want to feel a genuine connection to a real person. they don't want polish, they don't want cleanliness. they want lil nas x being his true self on social media. they want pinkpantheress dressing in yoga pants and then re-posting memes about how it looks like she works at kmart. the weeknd did a whole album cycle where he was walking around w/ a bloody nose and bandages on his face -- very believable character for him -- and the world ate it up; he pivoted to a concept album about a radio station or some shit and nobody cared. why did miley cyrus have a huge hit single this year after years of flopping? bcuz it's a good pop song but also bcuz it was about her divorce. why does taylor swift keep getting bigger and bigger? even beyonce, the queen of impenetrable polish, has reached a new level of acclaim and cultural renown by making her music far more personal than it ever had been.

which is all to say that, yeah, it would be hard to argue that wallen having a public drunken episode where he did something stupid that he regrets would then undermine the appeal of his music. the same could be said of the incident where he had to postpone his SNL performance bcuz he was making out w/ a bunch of sorority girls during covid. for some people (i.e. myself) it might undermine the appeal of him as *a person*, but that's different to me than undermining his appeal as an artist. and of course i'm sure for some ppl it enhanced the appeal of him both as an artist and a person, but i don't really find it useful to speculate on for how many people that is true. and frankly for me as a listener, i don't really care. i can't care, if i'm going to listen to country music. miranda lambert is prob one of my favorite artists ever, and every time i've seen her -- in both texas and new york city -- the crowd has chanted "let's go brandon!" a lot of kelefa sanneh's writing about country music centers around this very dynamic. i do think that the spectrum you outlined in your previous post is broadly correct, though, and i find it to be a far more interesting & nuanced conversation than most of what has been talked about in here today (does 1 play = 1 protest?)

in the case of the racial slurs, it accentuates rather than undermines our image of the Real Country Artist

????

with Wallen's fans it does

crut you dont think there are a large number of people in this country who conceive of country artists as getting a little drunk and having a heated gamer moment

you're pathologizing people and anyway you're making the point too literal & simplistic

i'd put it this way -- there is obviously a very long history w/in country music of the (male) singer being the cowboy, the outlaw, saddling right up to and even crossing lines of decency, especially decency as defined by people outside of the south. and also of that same singer being regretful, and tender-hearted, nursing his loneliness under the neon moon & what not. you have to stretch very little to see how morgan wallen crossing lines of decency in a modern context -- flouting covid rules, getting caught on camera saying something that he shouldn't have said -- could accentuate (key word) his appeal as a kind of age-old archetype that has been central to this music (and culture) since its inception

i made this point in the miranda lambert thread but there's also the fact that his audience probably consists of a large number of people who view the world thru a christianity driven lens of sinning & being redeemed. forgiving a transgressor & welcoming that person back into the congregation is not really a foreign concept to whatever portion of his fanbase (i'm making no value judgement here)

Lambert's writing a song with Wallen as a show of forgiveness, as well as more cynical commercial ambitions (can't separate them!), came up with the country writers I saw at Pop Conference last week who know the scene better than I do.

The fact that Wallen's transgressions did take place more or less privately does maybe encourage forgiveness narratives, because he got *caught* doing something wrong, which imposes at least some degree of shame, which is different from, say, outlaw acts that proudly fly/flew the confederate flag and rubbed your face in it. Of course, that picture of the dude up above boasts a "dangerous" guitar strap, which implies he knows exactly what he is doing, leaning into his transgressions and imperfections, which kind of undercuts sympathy.

christianity driven lens of sinning & being redeemed. forgiving a transgressor & welcoming that person back into the congregation

What other values do modern evangelical Christians have that might inform their reaction?

idk Josh: he flouted COVID restrictions at the height of the pandemic

dangerous is the title of his last album

Obviously in tribute to Michael Jackson.

xpost Yeah, I think I knew that, but didn't he try to be sneaky about it? I mean, he got *caught*, isn't that why he lost the SNL gig?

Regardless, I think the broader question remains an interesting one. Can "cancelled" artists be forgiven? Should they? Who gets to decide when they have been rehabilitated or repented enough? It's a question without an answer, or at least one that has not been clearly answered yet. Personally, I think Morgan Wallen has been pretty easy to avoid, and I feel no compulsion to give him my time (beyond this thread, lol). But there are definitely other artists I've struggled with over the years.

the covid thing was “caught on camera” but he was making out w/ college girls in a bar that was a diff thing than being filmed by a ring camera

White evangelical Christians, well known for embodying empathy and forgiveness.

"Embodying," no. "Performing" or "rehearsing" yes.

Seems like a really convoluted way of saying his fans are used to giving people who resemble them a free pass - which doesn't contradict the idea that he was rewarded for being outed as a racist.

J0rdan I commend you for posts so good that they make me think in ways that feel productive about this guy whose music has exactly nothing to offer me

Jord the way you switch from admonishing everyone for this:

but we don’t know the motivations behind any of those plays, and more to the point we have little to no historical context for how to judge the fanbase’s reaction vis a vis other cases

To florid speculative fan fiction about the forgiving, kind Christian souls who make up his audience is pretty wild

he makes incredibly catchy country-ish-meets-hip-pop music about drinking and smooching and there is a whole generation or two of people out there who have lived their whole lives shuffling country, pop and hip-hop.

I also am old enough to remember when this same line of thinking was used a million years ago about Big & Rich... And we see who John Rich turned out to be.

B&R's Horse of a Different Color is better than either Wallen album, true, while Rich is an even worse person.

To florid speculative fan fiction about the forgiving, kind Christian souls who make up his audience is pretty wild

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, May 9, 2023 7:22 PM (twenty minutes ago)

well look it's not speculative fan fiction to say that there is a strong crossover between country music fans and christianity. wallen's new album directly addresses jesus on at least two songs, which given how many tracks are on the album might actually be a low ratio by country standards. now you might retort that it's not fan fiction to say that there is also a crossover between country music fans & people who listen to morgan wallen's music bcuz they're animated by racism, but for reasons i've stated already i feel less comfortable making that second assumption in a manner as sweeping as other ppl in this thread

and also i went out of my way to say that i wasn't making a value judgement in my post about christian music fans because i have no intention of claiming that his fans are unusually "forgiving" or "kind," only that such people are well versed in viewing life thru a lens of sinning and redemption, however flimsy their morals or actions are in reality. alfred spelled this out literally for milo in a way that i didn't think was necessary, but thank you alfred. i think anyone who has been posting here for as long as i have would not confuse me for an apologist of christianity

I assume a hunk of this dude's fans have no idea about the shit that went down. My wife, for example, likes country, sometimes listens to mainstream country, but had never heard or heard of him, let alone the backstory. But then, she's not Christian.

I assume a hunk of this dude's fans have no idea about the shit that went down.

i'm not sure what your exact definition of "a hunk" is but i'd find this very hard to believe. no offense to your wife but if she had never heard of morgan wallen i'm not sure she's really the best test case here

To listen to a contemporary country station like 99.9 in Miami is to get Morgan Wallen all the time.

I mean, maybe she's heard him? But she's definitely never heard of him. No idea why or how that is. To be fair, she really doesn't listen to *that* much radio country in the grand scheme of things, just more than I do (which is ... basically none?). I think she favors female singers, so that may be it.

That's the thing: mainstream country radio isn't much playing women.

thank you for the anecdotal case of your family once again, v helpful to the conversation