Morgan Wallen has made mistakes – and he knows it. Now the young country star is coming to terms with those errors in judgment.
Most country music fans will remember the trouble Wallen got into last fall. As his star was rising, the 27-year-old singer’s invitation to perform on Saturday Night Live was rescinded. This occurred because he violated the wildly popular late-night show’s coronavirus protocols.
Prior to the scheduled performance, Wallen was captured on video partying with students from the University of Alabama. The videos, which were posted on social media, show the singer drinking, kissing girls, and playing guitar at a house party. He was also spotted at a bar and riding in a fan’s vehicle.
Morgan Wallen took to Instagram to apologize for his antics. Now, in an interview with The Washington Post, he is evaluating his behavior once again. And, he says he was not yet aware of how brightly the spotlight was shining on him.
“I didn’t really know until then the extent of how much people cared about what I was doing,” Wallen said during the interview. “That whole thing let me know that, okay, we’ve entered into a new territory here.”
And, while his wilder side has gotten Wallen in trouble, the singer believes staying true to who he is is what draws his fans to him.
“I think they can tell that I kind of just do as I please when it comes to music and when it comes to my life, and that I didn’t get thrown up here by a record label that said, ‘Act this way and say this and wear this and do that,’” Morgan Wallen said. “They know when they hear from me, it’s really coming from me, and I think that means a lot.”
Morgan Wallen’s Album Debuts at No. 1
On Jan. 17 Billboard announced that Morgan Wallen’s latest album debuted at No. 1. The singer released “Dangerous: The Double Album” on Jan. 8. By the next week, the album, Wallen’s second, topped the Billboard 200 albums chart.
He also achieved the largest streaming week ever for a country album. “Dangerous” features 30 songs and had the largest overall sales by unit of a country artist in more than two years.
Wallen, a Tennessee native, was again invited to perform on “Saturday Night Live” in December. He performed two songs on the show – “7 Summers” and “Still Goin’ Down.” He also appeared in a sketch that poked fun of his behavior in Alabama a few months prior.
“A lot of the people who watch SNL, that was their only experience with me,” he said during the interview. “So I wanted them to see a more human aspect of me, and not just that I’m some idiot doing things that they don’t agree with.”