Morgan Wallen has develop into certainly one of nation music’s largest stars of the previous few years, using his Everyman persona and brooding, whiskey-soaked country-rock songs to success not simply on nation radio, however within the pop sphere. However he’s brought about controversy alongside the way in which, too. He was dropped from Saturday Evening Stay in late 2020 after being caught flouting pandemic pointers. In February of the next yr, a video emerged of the singer utilizing a racial slur, which brought about the Nashville machine to briefly withdraw its assist of his music.
That scandal brought about widespread (and vital) discussions about nation music’s relationship with race; his regular-guy picture and heart-on-rolled-up-sleeve romanticism stored his fanbase streaming his music regardless of all of it. Harmful: The Double Album, launched a month earlier than the slur video was launched by TMZ, clocked in at 30 tracks — a streaming-age bonanza that helped his already-lofty chart positions. One Factor at a Time bests that monitor quotient, with 36 songs and no double-album disclaimer.
This megadose of Wallen doesn’t solely be sure that One Factor at a Time might be lodged on the prime of the charts for some time — alongside Harmful, which is at the moment at Quantity 5 on the Billboard 200 — it additionally reveals his most well-liked musical and lyrical tropes, in addition to his fondness for easy, slippery vocal melodies that simply stick in listeners’ brains. His frizzled wail sounds most snug on midtempo cuts, which fuse the extra downtempo efforts of hard-rock bands like Staind and Puddle of Mudd with Nashville touches like starlit slide guitars, whereas different tracks supply the occasional nod to wider musical traits, just like the insistent entice snares of “Dawn” or the Wealthy Gang interpolation that makes up the refrain of the “red-dirt wild baby” chronicle “180 (Way of life).” The title monitor, in the meantime, combines nation twang with snappy pop rock, its peppy guitars recalling the New Wave-leaning efforts of early-Eighties AOR acts.
Wallen’s lyrics largely deal with bars and beers and whiskey, and ladies who are sometimes unavailable, whether or not due to latest breakups or different attachments; the songs he’s co-written and chosen for One Factor incessantly take the Sia-tested route of utilizing a central metaphor as a fulcrum for extra exact observations. The chugging “’98 Braves” compares a relationship gone bitter to the titular Atlanta baseball staff, which went on a tear throughout the common season solely to get bounced throughout the league championship sequence; “Wine Into Water,” a country-fried tackle the brooding acoustic-guitar-led ballads of the Sundown Strip period, flips Jesus’ marriage ceremony miracle right into a hope for reconciliation with an ex; “You Proof,” which peaked at Quantity 5 on the Scorching 100 final yr, compares a lover’s intoxicating qualities to these of a high-grade whiskey.
One Factor at a Time avoids any direct point out of Wallen’s lightning-rod standing, though “Don’t Assume Jesus,” a jukebox-ready parable a few younger man rising up in a judgment-filled world, circles the concept of the fallout from screwups. “World likes to rear again and throw a couple of stones/So boy needs to throw a couple of stones of his personal,” he muses, seemingly on the point of heat up his pitching arm. However then he modifies course: “However Lord is aware of I ain’t good, and it ain’t my place/And I don’t assume Jesus executed it that approach,” he asserts. Wallen initially launched the monitor on Good Friday 2022, timing that made it really feel like a half-hearted apology. Within the context of the prolonged One Factor at a Time, it’s a quick second of near-introspection that’s shortly taken over by extra songs about, as he sings on the swirling “Good Lady Gone Missin’,” “good whiskey, dangerous selections, [and] heartaches from some arduous livin’.” Child steps, possibly, or possibly not.
