Morgan Wallen
Morgan Cole Wallen is an American country and country pop singer from Sneedville, Tennessee. In 2014, he competed in the sixth season of The Voice. After being eliminated in the playoffs, he signed to Panacea Records and released his debut extended play Stand Alone. Later in 2016, Wallen signed to Big Loud to release his second extended play The Way I Talk. His debut studio album If I Know Me included four singles: "The Way I Talk", "Up Down", "Whiskey Glasses", and "Chasin' You". If I Know Me, after a record-breaking 114 weeks on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, reached No.1.
Wallen's second studio album Dangerous: The Double Album was an immediate commercial success, becoming the first country album to spend its first seven weeks atop the Billboard 200 chart. The album spent the three following weeks at number one, thus spending its first ten weeks atop the chart. Dangerous: The Double Album included four singles: "More Than My Hometown", "7 Summers", "Sand in My Boots", and "Wasted on You", as well as various promotional singles.
Wallen's third studio album One Thing at a Time spent its first 12 weeks atop the Billboard 200, and topped the Billboard 200 for seven more non-consecutive weeks throughout 2023 and 2024, thus spending 19 non-consecutive weeks atop the chart. All 36 tracks from the album charted on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously, breaking the record set by Drake, Wallen additionally charted five tracks in the top-ten of the chart. The album spawned eight singles: "You Proof", "Thought You Should Know", "Last Night", the title track, "Everything I Love", "Thinkin' Bout Me", "Man Made a Bar", and "Cowgirls". The single "Last Night" peaked atop the Billboard Hot 100, marking Wallen's first number-one single on this chart, spent sixteen non-consecutive weeks atop the chart throughout 2023, and topped the 2023 year-end chart.
Wallen's fourth studio album I'm the Problem was released on May 16, 2025. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, where it remained for its first 8 weeks. After a two-week absence from the top position, it returned to number one for an additional 4 consecutive weeks, accumulating a total of 12 non-consecutive weeks atop the chart. It spawned the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles "Love Somebody" and "What I Want". Thirty-six of the 37 tracks from the album charted on the Billboard Hot 100, and six charted in the top 10, which gave Wallen the record as the first country artist to do so.
Wallen has been praised for his cross-genre appeal and cultural impact. He has received several accolades, including an Academy of Country Music Award, fourteen Billboard Music Awards, and won Entertainer of the Year at the 58th Annual Country Music Association Awards. Aside from his various accolades, Wallen holds multiple Billboard chart records: Wallen is the only artist to have two albums spend at least 100 weeks in the top ten of the Billboard 200, the only artist to have two albums spend at least 10 first-weeks atop the Billboard 200, the artist with the most weeks at number-one on the Top Country Albums chart, and his single "You Proof" is the longest-running Billboard Country Airplay number-one of all time, with ten non-consecutive weeks atop the chart. He also holds the record for being the modern country artist with the most Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits, with four.
Early life and education
Morgan Cole Wallen was born on May 13, 1993, in Sneedville, Tennessee, to Tommy and Lesli Wallen. Tommy served for a time as a local church pastor, while Lesli worked as a teacher. In his teens, the family moved south to Knox County, where he graduated from Gibbs High School. He was a pitcher and shortstop for the school's baseball team, and hoped to continue in college, but tore his ulnar collateral ligament his senior year.As a child, Wallen took piano and violin lessons. He was raised on a diverse musical playlist, with his father exposing him to classic rock mainstays. In his teens, he gravitated towards bands like Breaking Benjamin and Nickelback, as well as rappers like Lil Wayne. Wallen has characterized his early adulthood as adrift; he worked in landscaping after high school and was disappointed by his inability to continue his baseball career. He re-approached his interest in music and began learning guitar. He had grown to love country music, especially artists like Keith Whitley and Eric Church, and he modeled his sound after that lineage.
Career
2014–2015: ''The Voice'' and ''Stand Alone''
In 2014, Wallen competed on season 6 of the music competition program The Voice. He auditioned with the song "Collide" by Howie Day. Judges Shakira and Usher complimented his stylings, and Wallen joined Usher's team. He was later taken by Adam Levine's team after his second round, and later eliminated during the playoffs. Wallen later said of his experience on the show, "Some things in life are out of your control. Being the best you can be isn't. I didn't feel like I was the best I could have been. So I practiced harder". The Voice was instrumental in raising Wallen's profile, and he began to establish connections in the music industry.While in California to appear on The Voice, Wallen began working with Sergio Sanchez of Atom Smash, a vocal coach on the program. Wallen relocated to Nashville to further his career, and he and Sanchez started a temporary band: Morgan Wallen & Them Shadows. Sanchez introduced Wallen to Bill Ray and Paul Trust of Panacea Records. In 2015, Wallen signed to Panacea Records where he was joined by Dominic Frost on guitar and released the Stand Alone on August 24, 2015. "Spin You Around" was Wallen's debut single under Panacea Records; it was later certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in 2021.
2015–2019: ''If I Know Me''
In 2015, Wallen's manager, Dirk Hemsath of Working Group Artist Management, sent a demo of Wallen to record executive Seth England, who had Wallen audition for Big Loud, an independent record label. They signed Wallen to the label and the publishing company, who began pairing his songs with other artists. That year, he released his debut single "The Way I Talk"; his first music video for the song followed in 2017. Wallen co-wrote A Thousand Horses' single "Preachin' to the Choir", Dallas Smith's "The Fall", as well as Jason Aldean's "You Make It Easy" with Florida Georgia Line's Tyler Hubbard, Brian Kelley, and Jordan Schmidt. He joined Florida Georgia Line on their Dig Your Roots Tour. He collaborated with the group on the single "Up Down", his first song to reach the top five of Billboards Hot Country Songs chart.At the outset of his career, Wallen underwent a personal stylistic shift, adopting a distinctive mullet and a look that Kelefa Sanneh, profiling Wallen's rise in a piece for The New Yorker, described as "Everyman rock star" and "not just a singer but a character". Wallen had decided to adopt the retro hairdo after seeing a younger photo of his father with the cut. Wallen's debut studio album, If I Know Me, was released on April 27, 2018, with its third single, "Whiskey Glasses", becoming his biggest success yet.
The song reached the top spot on both the Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts; it also marked his first top 40 appearance on the all-genre Hot 100 ranking, where it placed at number 17. It was Billboards 2019 top Hot Country song and Top Country Airplay song. Sanneh characterized "Whiskey Glasses" as his signature song and a "perfectly constructed ode to a woman and a drink, lost and found, respectively". In 2019, Wallen joined Florida Georgia Line on their Can't Say I Ain't Country Tour. His next single, "Chasin' You", was serviced to radio in July 2019 and peaked at number two on the Hot Country Songs chart; like its predecessor, it captured the top spot on the overall year-end tally for 2020. In August 2020, If I Know Me reached No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart after a record-breaking 114 weeks.
2020–2021: ''Dangerous: The Double Album''
Wallen's profile continued to rise, with a growing following on platforms such as TikTok, and he developed into an unwitting sex symbol. Wallen appeared on the cover of Billboard, whose headline read: "Is Morgan Wallen Country's Next Global Star?" In October 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple videos were posted on TikTok showing Wallen ignoring CDC guidelines in bars and other locations in the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, area after attending a University of Alabama football game. As a result of this, Wallen's appearance as the musical guest on that week's episode of Saturday Night Live was cancelled; he ultimately performed in an episode two months later hosted by actor Jason Bateman, in which Bateman, Wallen, and several cast members parody the incident and resulting fallout.At the start of the pandemic, Wallen had more time to write and record material, which developed into his sophomore album, the double-disc Dangerous: The Double Album, which showcases a mix of country and R&B/pop balladry. Dangerous was an immediate blockbuster: it debuted atop the US Billboard 200 and the Canadian Albums Chart; it would remain atop the Canadian chart for four consecutive weeks, and the US chart for six consecutive weeks, marking the first new album from a country artist to do that since Garth Brooks' The Chase in 1992. The album also would become just the third album to spend its first ten weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 and the first in over 30 years since Whitney by Whitney Houston. Its singles—"More Than My Hometown", "7 Summers", "Sand in My Boots" and "Wasted on You"—were record-breaking hit songs that pushed Wallen farther into the national conversation. "7 Summers" earned him his first top 10 on the Hot 100, debuting and peaking at number six, and was also chosen by Time as one of the best songs of the year. Wallen soon became the first artist to ever chart six songs within the top 10 of Hot Country Songs chart at the same time in the week after his album's release; likewise, the album charted 23 tracks on the Canadian Hot 100, and 19 tracks on the Hot 100 in the US.