For this yr’s replace of our ongoing Biggest Pop Star by 12 months challenge, Billboard is counting down our workers picks for the highest 10 pop stars of 2023 all this week. At No. 5, we bear in mind the yr in Morgan Wallen — who put up mind-boggling stats all yr, however was nonetheless surprisingly invisible at occasions.
Few artists, if any, have been as set as much as put numbers on the board in 2023 as nation celebrity Morgan Wallen.
It had been two years for the reason that launch of his massive-in-all-ways Harmful: The Double Album and the backlash following his use of the N-word in a video captured on TMZ, making 2021 each the very best and worst yr of his profession. He had spent the remainder of that yr largely laying low as Harmful continued to provide – it will in the end break the Billboard 200 file for an album by a single artist with probably the most weeks within the prime 10 – after which took 2022 to reintroduce himself to followers. He set out on the Harmful Tour that February, then started to launch a sluggish trickle of music, resulting in Billboard Sizzling 100 prime 10 hits just like the trap-influenced “You Proof” and mama-I’m-crazy ballad “Thought You Ought to Know,” which proved how hungry many of the public nonetheless was for brand new Wallen materials.
Billboard’s Biggest Pop Stars of 2023:
Introduction & Honorable Mentions | Rookie of the 12 months: Peso Pluma | Comeback of the 12 months: Miley Cyrus | No. 10: Drake | No. 9: Doja Cat | No. 8: Dangerous Bunny | No. 7: Olivia Rodrigo | No. 6: Karol G
By early 2023, that sluggish trickle would flip right into a damaged dam. In late January, Wallen introduced the March launch of One Factor at a Time, to be a whopping 36 tracks lengthy – Harmful ran a scant 30 – and to be promoted on his One Evening at a Time World Tour, kicking off that April, which might take Wallen to stadiums for the primary time. Even earlier than its launch, the album was all however a pre-certified blockbuster, with the tracklist together with the already-minted hits “Proof,” “Thought” and the pop-rocking title monitor, the latter one in all three new songs he’d launched alongside together with his tour announcement in late 2022.
Matt Paskert
Matt Paskert
However one tune he launched whereas divulging the One Factor particulars would find yourself dwarfing all of them, in addition to something on Harmful. “Final Evening” was a part of one other three-pack (together with the Allmans-interpolating “Every part I Love” and the cleverly Bible-wary “I Wrote the E book”) launched by Wallen, this time to hype the One Factor announcement. The liquor-soaked, maybe-breakup anthem took off instantly following its mid-week launch, reaching the highest spot 5 weeks after its debut – not solely a profession first for Wallen, however a primary for any solo lead male nation star since Eddie Rabbitt again in 1981.
The ultimate push that bought “Final Evening” to No. 1 got here with the March launch of the total One Factor album, which unsurprisingly bowed with the most important first-week complete of the yr to that time: 501,000 models, almost doubling the 265,000 posted by Harmful in its opening body. One Factor would additionally chart all 36 of its tracks on the Sizzling 100 in its debut week, as Wallen blew previous the beforehand Drake-held file of 27 for probably the most songs notched by an artist on the chart in a single week. If Wallen’s superstardom had escaped anybody’s discover to that time, it was lastly unignorable.
And it will keep that approach for months. Each “Final Evening” and One Factor would proceed their rule on the Sizzling 100 and Billboard 200, respectively – often getting knocked off by an enormous debut or surging hit, however seemingly all the time returning to their perch. All in all, each tune and album would reign for 16 weeks complete, giving Wallen the longest reign on every chart but this decade – and the longest ever for any unaccompanied solo artist on the Sizzling 100.
Within the course of, Wallen additionally laid declare to territory that had largely eluded him to that time: prime 40 radio. Whereas he had been laying siege to nation radio for a half-decade already, he’d but to attain a lot success on the pop airwaves. However “Final Evening” was just too large to be missed, and it reached No. 5 on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart – a particularly uncommon stage of prime 40 success for a rustic tune and not using a main non-country visitor or clearly crossover-aimed manufacturing. And naturally, his dominance at nation radio virtually went with out saying: 4 songs from One Factor (“Proof,” “Thought,” “Evening” and “Thinkin’ Bout Me”) topped the Nation Airplay chart in 2023, and a fifth (“Every part”) is presently lurking across the prime 5.
In the meantime, all 2023, Wallen was main the cost for a rustic takeover on the Billboard charts, with the style significantly starting to catch as much as pop and hip-hop in its streaming presence. Although “Final Evening” was the primary nation Sizzling 100 by a solo lead male in over 4 a long time, it opened the floodgates for 3 extra instantly after it – from Jason Aldean, Oliver Anthony Music and Zach Bryan (with Kacey Musgraves), all with songs that have been large streaming successes. In our December cowl story on Wallen, Billboard’s Melinda Newman referred to as him “the tip of the spear for the style’s new technology,” and identified that whereas nation grew by grew by 24% in on-demand audio and video streaming from 2022 to 2023, Wallen’s numbers alone accounted for 31% of that progress.
So if he had the No. 1 album of the yr, the No. 1 tune of the yr, and was the most important driving drive behind arguably probably the most consequential pattern within the (English-language) music business this yr – by the best way, he additionally completed No. 4 on Billboard Boxscore’s 12 months-Finish Prime Excursions rating, highest of any artist who launched an album in 2023 – how is Morgan Wallen solely our No. 5 Biggest Pop Star this yr?
Properly, there’s no actual argument that there have been 4 artists with extra spectacular portfolios of economic achievements and statistics this yr. However have been there 4 better pop stars? We predict so, largely as a result of as large as Morgan Wallen’s music was this yr, the person himself was a much-less-conspicuous presence. He had no main award present or late evening appearances, launched no official music movies, had no significantly viral moments (apart from a fan brawl exterior his present that he wasn’t concerned with), barely posted on TikTok – the app as soon as integral to his early success – and till Billboard’s cowl story, made no main media appearances. Tens of millions of individuals caught Wallen on the One Evening at a Time tour, however if you happen to weren’t one in all them, you possibly can’ve very simply gone the whole yr with out seeing the person in motion.
It’s an unsurprising and arguably sensible technique for an artist whose largest profession moments within the highlight have largely been embarrassing ones – from his 2020 arrest for public intoxication and disorderly conduct to his violation of SNL’s COVID-19 coverage and subsequent elimination from the present later that yr, to, after all, his filmed racial slur utilization in 2021. And whereas a big portion of the general public seems to have moved on from these incidents, Wallen’s continuous underperformance at main award reveals – shut out at this yr’s CMAs, and with no nominations on the 2024 Grammys (“Final Evening” is up for finest nation tune, however he’s not nominated since he didn’t write on it) – suggests there might stay (comprehensible) exhausting emotions from some of us within the business. It is smart that Wallen would proceed to tread frivolously re-inserting himself into the mainstream’s heart.
In the meantime, his chart fortunes have clearly not suffered for his lack of nationwide visibility or award wins – no matter Wallen’s presence within the headlines or lack thereof, his industrial momentum has solely ever trended upwards since his 2018 breakthrough. This yr, he even proved he might cross over to the pop world with out actually enjoying the pop sport. So so long as he can prime the charts and promote out his excursions whereas letting his music do the speaking for him, there’s not essentially rather a lot compelling Wallen to do extra.
Truthful sufficient. However true pop stardom – from Madonna and Michael Jackson to BTS and Dangerous Bunny – has all the time been about extra than simply the numbers. It’s about affect, about presence, about being the entire package deal. It’s about placing your self on the market, in nearly each approach attainable, and typically risking all of it within the course of. Wallen can and most probably will proceed to prime almost each official Billboard chart whereas laying low, comparatively talking, nevertheless it’ll take him being just a little extra prepared to step into the highlight at his brightest to get to the highest of those rankings.