On the eve of a big Friday for Morgan Wallen – a new album being released tomorrow AND a recently announced free concert in Nashville, yes it’s free – the country singer probably can’t help but look back at the wild couple of years it’s been since he was in the news for something other than music. If you remember, he was already somewhat popular with country music fans when a tattle tale neighbor recorded him using “the ‘n’ word” as he was dropped off at home one winter evening. Of course what Morgan did was a pretty bad idea and a bad choice of words, but what a *fun* neighbor to have, right?
Since that unfortunate scene, Morgan Wallen’s popularity has only grown…and grown… and grown. Even when radio stations stopped spinning his music, awards shows blacklisted him, and famous white people everywhere blasted him, his place in country music wasn’t vacated. I guess that old adage might be true, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” coined by P.T. Barnum. Tell that to Will Smith! Oscar Wilde said it this way…
“There’s only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
oscar wilde
Morgan is definitely being talked about and the numbers below confirm it. Take a look at a few screen grabs showing data from Spotify, Instagram, Shazam, and TikTok since that infamous video recording in late January 2021.
Mistakes aside, for country music’s sake it’s a good thing Morgan Wallen is around, especially when OTHER country music singers *ahem Brad Paisley* are making a joke of the genre. Good luck getting a ticket for tomorrow’s free show. Something tells me it might make the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster fiasco look like a walk in the park.
-Out of the Wilderness
Out of the Wilderness 