One morning last June – somewhere between waking up and going fishing with his cousin – Morgan Wallen wrote a song, and felt the impulse to immediately play it for the rest of the world.
The song was called “Dangerous,” and after the 27-year-old put a few verses together with friend and hit songwriter Ernest Keith Smith, he propped up his phone, picked up his acoustic guitar and filmed a quick performance for Instagram.
That’s not a typical rollout for a new song from a country star – especially a song that ends up being the title track of his new double album – but one that the times demanded.
More:Morgan Wallen leaks new songs from 'Dangerous' album after Walmart puts it on shelves
“It might have even been a little bit selfish,” Wallen tells The Tennessean. “Like, ‘Hey, I need some juice. I need somebody to give me a little confidence. Give me something. Because this is weird. And I don't really know how else to get a hold of anyone now, other than to put this out here.”
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2020, after all, was supposed to be a year that gave the Sneedville, Tenn. native more “juice” than he knew what to do with.
He’d capped off the previous year opening for Luke Combs’ two sold out shows at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, cementing his position as one of the biggest new stars country music had seen in the past five years – arguably only second to Combs. He was gearing up to headline his own arena tour in the fall, on the heels of four consecutive No. 1 hits.
Instead, the pandemic left him taxied on the runway, with an overwhelming amount of momentum to deal with and redirect.
“Dangerous” turned into a 30-track double album as a result of all the time Wallen spent at home writing songs, between fishing and riding four-wheelers. He shared several more songs with fans when they were still works in process, and one of them, “7 Summers,” became his latest No. 1 hit last year.
Wallen’s impulses seem to have rarely steered him wrong. Except, of course, when they have.
The song “Dangerous” was inspired by a night he had just spent in downtown Nashville, which ended with him being arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct outside of Kid Rock’s honky-tonk.
“I don't wanna go downtown, doing what we used to,” he sings on the track. “Twist the top off another round, hell, I got enough loose screws…Think I'm gonna stay right here tonight/ Cause that could be dangerous.”
Wallen says he wanted to write “a warning” to himself.
“If you're in a state of mind to where you're going to drink to get away from something, to mute those noises, it doesn't usually end well for me,” he says. “Life always has things that you can run from, and I've had a lot of those over the past couple years.”
Still, writing “Dangerous” didn’t stop Wallen four months later, when he made the biggest blunder of his career. After visiting the University of Alabama for a football game, he hit the town, and partied maskless in close quarters with his college-age fans – even kissing several of them. A few days later, he arrived in New York City to make his debut on “Saturday Night Live,” only to learn he was being replaced due to violating the show’s safety protocols.
From his hotel room, Wallen propped up his phone again, this time to post an apology.
“I think I’ve lost myself a little bit,” he said in the video. “I’ve tried to find joy in the wrong places, and I don’t know, it’s left me with less joy.”
He spent a month out of the public eye, and most of that time was away from work, too.
“You get so caught up in the career, you kind of forget about the person behind the career,” he says.
“I think it was very beneficial for me, and for my team. I mean, I'm sure that they were probably a little nervous about the way I was being. I wasn't meaning no harm to anybody, but I was also kind of a tumbleweed, you know? It was good for me. It's bittersweet too, because I'd love to be playing arenas right now.”
Wallen was invited back to perform on “SNL” in December, and even starred in a sketch that spoofed that infamous night in Alabama. He was also able to laugh about the incident at the CMA Awards in November, when co-host Darius Rucker joked that he’d kept Wallen locked up in his dressing room for two weeks.
Later that night, Wallen was accepting the award for New Artist of the Year. He thanked his mom for “push(ing) me to sing” – she started putting him onstage at church when he was 3 years old, and signed him up for “The Voice,” which he appeared on in 2014.
His dad, in turn, “put in a lot of hours” to support his son’s pursuits. He also inspired Wallen’s trademark mullet haircut – a standard look for the country stars of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, but a definite head-turner in 2021.
It started a couple of years ago when Wallen took a tour of CMT’s offices, where the network’s Stacey Cato pointed out an art piece – showing a line of country stars in silhouette, seen from behind.
“He was like, 'I bet you can look at that, and tell who all those people are, can't you?” Wallen recalls. “And I said, 'Yeah, I can,' and I named off who it was. He was like, ‘Well, you know, that's pretty important.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, that is important. But I don't know if people can recognize me from the back right now.”
It was still on his mind when he went to visit his parents and flipped through their old photo albums.
“I got to the one where they're getting married, and my dad had a mullet. And he was 25. I was 25 at the time…I said, 'Man, maybe that's it. I'm gonna get me a mullet. I'm gonna show some respect to my dad and do something a little bit different.' It just caught on, man. That was it. That was 'Game Over.'"
Time will tell if the tradition carries on to a third generation. In July, Wallen became a father with the birth of his son, Indie Wilder.
In a post to Instagram at the start of 2021, Wallen called his son's birth "themost incredible, scary, beautiful thing of my life...I know I'm always gonna be a little wild and crazy, but I pray that he knows my heart and that I show him a fraction of the love of Jesus my dad and mama have shown me.
Things have remained untraditional for Wallen in the lead up to the January 8 release of "Dangerous." After the album showed up on Walmart racks ahead of street date, he leaked several of its tracks on his own social media accounts, adding "I don't shop at Walmart anyway."
With those leaks, fans got a taste of the wild promise "Dangerous" packs for mainstream pop success, even as Wallen's twang runs rampant over tracks like "Whiskey'd My Way," "Still Goin' Down" and "Watcha Think of Country Now."
There's little doubt that "Dangerous" will debut at No. 1, and provide return trips to Top 40 airplay, as "7 Summers" did last year. Rarely does a day go by without Wallen hearing a comment in the vein of"I don't like country, but I love this."
"I've never been like 'All right, I need to stay this much country and bring in 14 percentpop,'" Wallen says with a laugh."I try not to get into too analytical, too in my head about it., So far, I've just made what I like, what I'm excited about and proud of. And luckily, my fans have been on the same page as me so far."
While the arenas will have to wait, Wallen will celebrate the release of "Dangerous" on stage with his band at the Ryman Auditorium. They'll stream a free concert on hisFacebook and YouTube pages at 8 p.m. CT on January 12.
