Switched on Pop - Is Morgan Wallen the problem with country music?

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Country music stands at a crossroads between tradition and evolution, and no artist embodies this tension better than Morgan Wallen. His song "I'm the Problem" opens with beautiful bluegrass guitar before hitting you with hard-hitting 808 basslines, creating a sonic reflection of country's current identity crisis. Wallen has this uncanny ability to turn his endless personal problems into undeniably catchy hooks that somehow make him more relatable, not less. Despite having every reason to write him off, there's something about his gritty voice and imperfect persona that keeps drawing listeners back. What makes him so compelling, and why his 37-track album dominated the charts, reveals something deeper about what country music is becoming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Nate, country music, right now, more than ever, is at a crossroads. It's got a problem. And no one understands that problem better than Morgan Wallen. I guess I'm the problem.

Your miss never do no wrong. If I'm so awful, then why'd you stick around this long? And if it's the whiskey. Why you keep on pulling it off the shelf You hit the when you look at me You halfway see yourself And it got me thank you

If I'm the problem Well, you might be the reason So that's the eponymous single Off of his new 37-track album I'm The Problem Are you sure those 37 tracks aren't the problem? We'll get to that This album by Morgan Wallen

has spent four weeks atop the Billboard 200. And as of this recording, he has 20 songs on the Hot 100. The song, I'm the Problem, it's currently at number six. And I feel like this song captures part of what country music is grappling with. Are we living in the past or are we living in the present? It feels like this reckoning has been building for some time. I think this song lives in both sides of this time divide. I mean, just from the beginning, we get this very traditional, beautiful, flat-picked acoustic guitar

in a bluegrass style. It waffles back and forth between F minor and D-flat major. Behind it is this crying slide guitar. It reminds me of those classic spaghetti western compositions by Ennio Marconi, like his theme from the good, the bad, and the ugly. I can't really do that.

Morgan Spaghetti Western Wallen. I feel like the song has a little bit of the vibe because it goes back and forth between this minor and major feel, something you hear a lot in those spaghetti westerns, has a similar kind of instrumentation, that twangy, almost surfy guitar, has that traditional acoustic guitar sound and these gliding, slighty, ethereal background qualities. The song doesn't stop there, though, because, of course, it also contains the other side. It contains contemporary sounds, hard-hitting 808-style bass lines from hip-hop.

The song If I'm so awful And why do you stick around this long And if it's the West The song Is sparse On the one hand It has these traditional

acoustic and electric sounds And on the other It uses the 808 as this sort of cinematic extra punch When we get to the chorus And get to the core of this song Who is to blame?

Is it Morgan? Let's hear his case. I say I'll never change just to go around town with some gasoline Just trying to bomb a flame Gonna burn the whole place down He's run around town With a bucket of gasoline

Trying to bum a smoke I mean, this is reckless behavior Nate Is he the problem? Seems to be shaping up that way You know, I'm not sure that Morgan Wallen is willing To take the blame Because I'm the problem Feels kind of like a response song

To his 2020 song Somebody's Problem Off of his double album Dangerous Think about them tan lines And I'm thinking damn I'd love to drown in them heartbreak of blue eyes He's somebody's problem

And somebody's problems About to be mine Pretty clear to me He's saying, hey, look, you got lots of problems But I'm willing to take you on to be mine But then we fast forward to today And he's saying, well, wait a minute Maybe I am the problem

But then his willingness to accept being the problem gets a little more complicated in the chorus It's a long enough is the end of the It's a little bit of a relationship And it got me thank you If I'm the problem You might be the reason It's a long walk

But at the end of the chorus We get a little bit of a reversal here It's a song about a relationship Yeah And then he's throwing it back at his partner You know, I'm the problem I'm the problem Maybe you're the problem

Maybe you're the reason I'm the problem Oh, how about that And it's got even a little more punch because we get this modulation when he's like, and I've been thinking. And we get this new chord that we haven't heard before and you're like, he's about to bring it. Maybe you're the reason, oh, mic drop. Bam, instrumental interlude. It's a good payoff. Right. We've been going back and forth between this F minor and this D flat major and then all of a sudden he gets thinking, oh, we're going to new chord. Things are progressing. And what's great about this line is that

when he says, and it got me thinking, he rhymes it with if I'm the problem, you might be the reason. Thinking and reason. Only rhyme if you've got the right country twang. Thinking, reason. It works just in a country song. Well, there's that twang, Chuck. There's the instrumentation you talked about at the outset. And then there's the lyrics of this thing.

I feel like we have some tropes of the country tradition here. You have to. Whiskey on the shelf. As soon as you hear the word shelf in a song, you know the next rhyme that's coming. Thank God, the English language invented the word shelf. Otherwise, we'd never be able to rhyme with myself and yourself unless it's like a Christmas song about an elf. But thank goodness, someone put a shelf there so we can get those self rhymes.

And yeah, whiskey belongs on a shelf, absolutely. You know, whiskey is such an obvious trope, but it also is doing a lot in this song. saying like, if I'm the problem, why are you taking the whiskey off the shelf? Seems like you might be enabling my own bad behavior. And it's also another callback to one of his first big successes, the song Whiskey Glasses. I'm going to need some whiskey glasses off of his debut 2018 album, If I Know Me, is another great country classic. I love its use of plain, simple language. things like whiskey glasses that can have double meaning.

A whiskey glass. So we take a shot from. But whiskey glasses are also seeing from an ebriated position. This song, if I may take a quick deviation, has a number of other great turns of phrase I want to share with you, right from the first line. Pour me. Pour me another drink.

That's great. Yeah, that's good. That's good. Okay. Let's go to the second verse. Yep, there it is. Last call at the bar. I swear this will be my last call dialing you. There's a term for this, Charlie. Do you remember?

I dropped it years ago in an episode actually about Taylor Swift. I think it was about folklore evermore. Is it something slippery? Man. The country banana peel? It's a term coined by one of the great country music scholars, Jimmy Rogers. And it's called the hinged figure. Ooh, the hinged figure.

Okay. The hinge. Door hinge that goes two ways. It's when you take a phrase and then you transform its meaning into something else. And it's a very common device in country music and it's used very effectively here. Okay. Well, then I don't know if his referencing of whiskey in I'm the Problem, as a callback to one of his earliest singles, further enhances these meanings. But it definitely brings us deeper into Morgan Wallen's problematic universe in which he is admitting.

That he is the problem, maybe? Right. And that was my first thought hearing this. Is this a commentary on his larger public persona as well? Yeah. In which he is at times a problematic figure. We're going to get more into Morgan Wallen's problems and music, but we have a problem right now between you and me. Uh-oh.

It's Monday. Monday, Monday. Do you know why it's a problem that it's Monday? Because we're not supposed to have an episode on Monday. No, we're not. What is happening? What's happening is that we're looking. deeper into this larger crossroads of country music for an entire week. This is country week

on Switched on Pop. We are publishing every single day this week looking at some of the biggest questions in country music, tradition versus evolution, moral purity versus problematic behavior. And above all, who gets to be country in this country? And how can we even identify what country sounds like today? We've always dipped our toes in the country creek over the years on the pod, Charlie, but this feels like an essential moment because, as you said at the start, not only is it country at a crossroads in many ways facing all these questions. Yeah. But it's also a moment when country is more commercially successful and more at the center of popular culture than it's been probably since the days of Patsy Kline. It's a really fascinating moment and it deserves a full

week of attention. So, switch on pop history being made as we speak. It's Monday. It's Speaking of history, I think we should do a little looking backwards because this crossroads event isn't anything new. You could have many starting points in time. But I think as the current conversation goes, I'd probably go back to 2019 when Lil Nasx is kicked off the country billboard charts. But this conversation of who belongs in country was loudly amplified back in 2024 with Beyonce asking what it means to be country and who gets to be country in America on her album, Cowboy Carter. Genres are a funny little concept, aren't they? Yes, they are. In theory, they have a simple definition that's easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.

She's continuing that conversation as she embarks on her Cowboy Carter tour. I went and saw it recently at MetLife Stadium, where she opens singing the national anthem. She celebrates the black identity and black labor and ingenuity that goes into building country music and the country as a whole. This project broke barriers. First, black woman with a number one hit country song. It also minted new country stars, stars like Shibuzi, a black country hip-hop crossover artist who had been making music for a minute, but with his features on Cowboy Carter was boosted to a larger audience and his subsequent single bar. song took over every radio station in America, it seems, including country radio. When polled me of a double shot of whiskey, they know me and Jay Dane's got a downtown near

Fis Street. Everybody at the bar. When polled, none of my students knew that that was an interpolation of J-QAW's 2004 song, Tipsy. This generation is lost. That's because they don't drink anymore, I think. Probably. Ting drinking is very bad.

Thank you, Jaquan. Yo, I got a fake I need, though. Yeah, yeah. One, there comes to two to the three to the four. Everybody back now you don't get none. Everybody you just busy. So Lil Nas X, Beyonce, Shabuzzi, are all asking who gets to belong in country music and what does it sound like? This sort of country reclamation is part of a dialogue that I think is really well highlighted in the writer Tressie McMillancottom's piece from the New York Times.

country music is entirely at war with itself, where she argues that on the one hand, we have this sort of reparative multiculturalism happening within the world of country music. And on the other hand, there is this reactionary whiteness, where white artists are using the sounds of hip-hop in country music, and she says that they're often separating black art from black artists and repackaging it as white authenticity to white audiences, basically using the sound of hip-hop combined with the sound of Nashville. I think the artist who best captures the reactionary whiteness side of the argument might be Jelly Roll, who started out as a rapper on his 2011 debut album, Gambling on a White Boy 4 and a song like, Where Was You?

It's fucked up where I live. This is just how it is. Cocaine paid the bills over here for years. All alone at the cemetery, shedding them tears. Can't believe I will never see a little bro again. Gammon on a White Boy 4. In the first decade of his career, his music celebrated partying, dealing, hard drug use, often that drew from his personal experiences of multiple arrests, starting at age 14. But as the decade grew on, closer to 2020, he gets sober, becomes a father, and starts to sing about his connection with a higher power. And his music leaves the hip-hop genre and progresses into a more traditional country sound. You can hear it on a song like 2020s, Save Me, an acoustic ballad where he really starts to leave behind that old rapper identity.

Fast forward to 2024, his hit song, Liar, is just country through and through, banjos, guitars, fighting temptations of the flesh. On one hand, I love hearing in Jelly Rolls transformation from white hip hop star to weathered country balladeer, the fact that there's actually a lot of commonality between these two genres in terms of the subject matter. You know, often songs about living outside of the law, songs about family ties and the beauty and the hardship of that. But then there's this other element, which is like how freely white artists are able to move between genres and take on these personas and then shed them as they see fit or really as the commercial landscape demands of them. Whereas artists of color are not necessarily afforded that same ability. to traverse genres, there might be a double standard at play. Yeah, I think that this argument of reparative multiculturalism versus reactionary whiteness holds a lot of water.

At the same time, I think that in a lot of ways, country music isn't quite so simple and doesn't always boil down into these two narratives, however much they are absolutely true. I mean, just go back to Beyonce's project for a second. And think about another artist that she worked with who has made this transition, post-Malone, Another white rapper who put on a trucker hat and flannel, and all of a sudden, he could be a country star. Well, Beyonce worked with Post Malone on their collaborative country ballad love song, Levi's jeans. Some true Americana Levi's jeans backed by the great Nile Rogers and 808 sort of beat. We have, once again, here, the world of country and hip-hop and black art colliding.

And I think that this co-lab with Beyonce gave Post-Belone some of the. the cred to make the full move into country music with his album F1 Trillion that featured collaborations with pretty much every single major country star of the moment, including the aforementioned Morgan Wall. Pulling more bottles off the shelf, Charlie. There it is. This way, I think his music is very hip-hop adjacent, not just in sound, but in creating this larger world-building, these narratives that persist across these silly, love.

heartbreak songs. Yeah. I thought of another rhyme for self. She went to the University of Guelph. Where? That's a city in Canada. I think, I've never actually said it out loud. I don't know how it's pronounced. G-U-E-L-P-H-Gelf. I don't know exactly. Oh, man. Possible substitute for a shelf. Sincere apologies to all our listeners, but especially the Canadian listeners. Okay, shelf rhymes aside. I think that going through this lineage from Lil Nas' X to Beyonce to Beyonce with Shabuzzi post Malone, and now to Morgan Wallen, we see that maybe this narrative of the two sides of country music aren't so simple, but rather are part of a messy entangled web. And one of those stars probably at the top of their game is Morgan Wallen. And even though he might be the self-enointed problem, I think we need to listen more closely to, to his work, to hear his vision of what country music is today.

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New Potion Nine of Sebastian, the secret professional, of who not sighings, tendences, but of what makes Morgan Wallen compelling is that he's really the perfect, imperfect messenger with an endless capacity for crafting hooks. This guy grew up in Tennessee. He played violin, piano, and guitar as a kid, got his start on The Voice, moved to Nashville and spent a decade climbing his way to the top, blending Nashville country credentials

with pop hooks and hip-hop flow and beats. Case in point, his 20-23, you know. enormous hit last night. But he's doing more than just combining the sounds of country, pop, and hip-hop. There is so much self-mythologizing happening in this very simple chorus because a huge part of Morgan Wallen's story are his countless missteps that he really names in last night, right? He's been arrested so many times for bar brawls and disorderly conduct. He was caught partying during COVID lockdown.

He was documented drunkenly using the N-word, which resulted in multiple apology campaigns and a half million dollars worth of donations going to the Black Music Action Coalition, the National Museum, African American Music, and Rock Against Racism. And most of those events led to an increase in his sales. undoubtedly white backlash can account for some of those increases in sales. I also think that all of that bad behavior found audiences rubbernecking at all of his problems trying to ask, what is this guy up to and how does he keep churning his issues to great hooks? I mean, he literally does it right there in last night.

It's almost like a non-apology apology for his bad behavior. Last night we let the liquor talk. I can't remember everything we said, but we said it all. He told me that you wish I was somebody you never met, but baby, baby, something's telling me this ain't over yet. How is that showing his acknowledgement? I mean, come on. Last night, we let the liquor talk. I can't remember everything we said, but we said at all.

Interesting. I'm not sure I read it that way. I mean, it seems like it's a song about letting out all the things that went on set in a relationship for so long, and then seeing, you know, where you might go for. from there. Sung by the guy who goes to bars and gets thrown out for his behavior, the things that he says, the things that he does. It definitely, I think, serves multiple purposes here, both the love and heartbreak, but also

I'm the guy that has a lot of these problems that I have to go around apologizing for. I can see that. And certainly if you listen to it through the lens of I'm the problem, becomes more of a lineage of excusing your own behavior or something. And I think it's worth pointing out just how captivating this was for listeners. That 2023 album, one thing at a time, sold more records than Taylor's tortured poets department. Wow. And yet didn't get, I think, anywhere near the level of public discourse.

Certainly not the critical attention. I mean, there's something about Morgan Wallen's voice that is not discussed enough. Whatever you think of this artist, dude can sing a song. Oh, yeah. In a weird way, and I'm probably going to regret saying this, I'm reminded of Franks. Sinatra. Yep, already regretting it. But we did an episode a few weeks ago about Seth McFarland's recordings of undiscovered

Frank Sinatra songs. And we were talking about how Sinatra's gift was the perfect phrasing of a melody. So that once you heard him sing it, you couldn't really hear anyone else sing it. Morgan Wallen has the same gift. His phrasing is so exemplary. Oh, it is. Last night, we let the liquor talk. Last night.

There's a way to sing that where the words don't hit quite as well, but he's got this sort of, he's a little bit like a drummer, too, in a way, the way he sings. He like hits every note just where it's supposed to be. Yeah. It's so satisfying to listen to. I remember asking you at one point on the show, why do people love listening to Morgan Wallen? I think it was a rhetorical question trying to test moral purity. Like, this guy's got so many problems. Why do we listen to him? Well, because he's, he's, he can sing a great hook. And as I was saying earlier, I think he really is this imperfect narrator and that people see themselves in this very flawed human being. That's really the theme that we hear on the rest of the album. Like, he's just going to waffle back and forth between like, I've got it all figured out. He has a pair of song, for example, Genesis and Revelation, trying to reckon with faith and good behavior. And then on the other hand, he has a, I think, one of the low points on the album, Skull, Chevy, and Browning, where he sings, you have to be there in a pinch like skull, be steady like a rock like a Chevy, and shoot him straight like

your brown and gun. Plenty of the country tropes. Another great crossover between hip-hop and country music. Love a nice product placement. Yeah, there's so many ways that this album is a hip-hop album, disguised as a country album. And I think there's no song that captures this feeling more than his collaboration with Tate McCray, their song, What I Want. To begin with, of course, we have to open with the hook. She said you don't want this heart, boy, it's already broke.

Told me everything she touched us goes up and smoke. Only stay a cup of nights, then she gonna be gone. I said, baby, you should know that's what I want. That's what I want. The song starts with the hook. That's what you got to do today, right? Indeed, yeah. Whether it's a hip hop track, pop track, even country track.

Backing him is this beautiful sort of bluegrass style flat picking by Brian Sutton, one of my absolute favorite guitar players. He adds a 12-string guitar into the mix. It sounds almost like an Appalachian dulcimer. which must feel very at home for Morgan Wallen. But then, with Tate McCray, the song takes a turn. Tate McCray, who is doing Pussycat Dolls meets Timbalin beats in her own work, brings in the hip-hop beat, trap 808 sort of sound,

And the curse of singing. And the curse of singing. Oh, not the curse of singing. No, the cursive singing. Indie girl voice, perhaps. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we leave the world of twang. This is such a big crossover.

And that way, this song is really a hip-hop track because it is a song that is a co-lab, that is cross-genre could play on so many kinds of stations. And it's song four on an album with 37 songs, right? This strategy of adding more songs. songs to your album was really started in the world of hip-hop. I always think of Drake's 2018 Scorpion, which had 25 songs on it. Of course, the purpose of this is that the longer your album, the more that it builds up on streaming.

And everyone has gone on to copy this strategy. Taylor's deluxe albums are endlessly long. And it does raise a question, Nate, a question that we predicted back at the beginning of this year. Ooh. Rihanna said that in 2025, we would see an extra large triple album. Yes, in our bingo predictions back in January. Right.

Does this count as a triple album? Here's the thing. Huh. I'm The Problem is released as a single one album on streaming. Like if you go look at the metadata, one long album. If you go back and look at the Beatles White album, there's a disc one and a disc two. When printed on CD, Morgan Wallen's album, is two discs, but when printed to vinyl, it is on three vinyl discs. I'm glad we're having this discussion because I hadn't considered the full,

ontological implications of what is an album in 20, 25, when no one is actually buying albums for the most part. Does the artist have to formally create this tripartite division? Right. Or can it be retrofitted based on the limitations of a long playing record? Yeah. I feel like a three vinyl album is a triple album. Okay. So I want to cross this off the bingo card. Uh, okay, but hold on. Uh, in 2021, Morgan Wallen put out the album, Dangerous, The Double Album, which, Going to Spotify, disc one begins with sand in my boots, disc two begins with still going down. There are 30 songs on that album. So his double album, fewer songs than his current album, which has 37 songs, but the double album,

when printed to vinyl, three discs. So, do we count the artist's intent or the limitations of the physical medium? I'm a little bit more on the artist's intent. I think that this has to be a self-proclaimed triple album for it to count. I see what you mean. There needs to be a thematic reason to break up the album into different sections. An example would be like Sum 41 recently put out a double album called Heaven and Hell. Wow, that should be a bingo card.

Unexpected Sum 41 reference. Amazing. Okay, I'm backtracking now. Yeah, maybe it does have to be the artist's discretion. So this is just a massive 37 song album. I don't like it, but I'll accept it. And I don't want to suggest that this song is just a commercial grab. I think that the co-lab with Tate McCray, however much it doesn't fall into the world of country sounds and country artists, I think it's got a good little hook going, right?

The chorus, you don't want this heart, babe. It's already broke. In a song that's about a one-night stand, there's some real heartache behind this one drunken night. And that's a big part of Morgan Wallen's message about being. the problem. He's constantly in this pendulum of commitment. Take for example the song Love Somebody. I have to interject because earlier I compared Juan to Frank Sinatra, I would be so remiss if I didn't also acknowledge the debt he has to hip-hop flow. I mean, when he comes in with that verse, it's just a rap song with a little bit of country twang. It is so,

thoroughly in the lexicon of hip hop that we almost take it for granted but it still needs to be said. This is now part of the sound of modern country. This rhythmic delivery of lyrics that is entirely drawn from the hip-hop playbook. While I entirely agree with you, in this verse specifically, I think he might be more copping dual Lipa's flow. Okay, let's hear it. 10 be That's training season off of radical optimism Same flow

As Love Somebody But that's not the point The point is On the one hand With T McCrae We're like, hey, I'm heartbroken I'm just gonna have a one night Stand, nothing matters

I just need somebody to love for this one night And then this next song Love Somebody is like Is there someone I can take home for real? And it's almost just like He's resolving his problems In fact, this song I'm the problem that we listened to

at the beginning It leads the album, I'm the problem Which is followed by the song I got better. This pendular back and forth. I got better. Sounds like what happens if John Mayer and Mark Knopfler hung out in Nashville and solved all of Morgan Wallen's problems. I see what you mean. It's got that dire straits kind of choracy wash over the top of it.

Yeah. He's not afraid to get into his feelings on this album. Even the album cover reflects that, you know. It's like this hand-drawn picture of him in profile. It's like, here I am. It's me, Emo Wallen. Take me as I am. I wouldn't have thought emo, but there is something very earnest about saying, I'm finally back to being who I am. It's raw. He's someone who's in touch with his feelings.

Feelings that are so not committed. This guy just can't hold it down. He's always a little bit slippery. Hmm. Every time I try, I just sit the brakes. And there's always a baby just in case. You wake up on him. Every now and then I go get a taste.

This guy is broken, at least in his songs. He is imperfect. He is constantly wondering, where is the love that I need? I need someone to love, but I'm not going to be willing to commit and actually fall in love because he just has to exist in this constant state of being the problem. And I think that's part of what makes him such a compelling artist right now. I don't love what he does and how he acts. I honestly was not looking forward to having to listen to what is this 37 songs that go for almost

two hours, longer than a film should be. But I listened to it the first time, and I was like, okay, I don't turn that back on. I listen to it again and again. And I admit, there are skips on this record. It's a long album. But at every point that it was on in the background, that gritty voice, that compelling flow, the flat-picked guitar against 808 beats, I found myself nodding my head to it more than I ever thought I would. This broken country star with a very imperfect record, I think has captured a sound that people want to hear, all of its problems included. Morgan Wallen presents just one view of what country music sounds like today. He is the biggest commercial force in country music and one of the biggest in pop music period,

but there are so many sounds of country at this moment, sounds that we're going to explore all throughout Country Week. Over the next four days, we're going to learn more about the uneasable. collaboration between hip-hop and country and the work of Big X the plug and Bailey Zimmerman. We're going to hear about how women are finding their space in the modern country music landscape by listening to Lainey Wilson and Jesse Murph. We're going to expand our understanding of what American country music even means by listening in on Mexican-American groups like Group of Frontera. And finally, we'll dig into the Americana roots of country music and how they continue to fuel the genre's rise. Switch on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz.

edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brandon McFarlane, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb, theme song by Jossi Adams and Zach Tenario of Arc Iris, remember of the Vox Media Podcast Network and production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at mymag.com slash pod. We're going to be back tomorrow for our next installment in Country Week. So, until tomorrow, thanks for listening.