On Sunday night, country-music singer Morgan Wallen was arrested in Nashville after allegedly throwing a chair off the roof of a bar. This is not Wallen’s first brush with the law, or with controversy — as the musician’s star has risen, it has become clear that questionable to outright racist behavior is part of his whole deal. Despite a previous arrest and footage that shows him uttering a racial slur, Wallen and his litany of apology videos have managed to maintain a robust fan base and a seemingly thriving career. Here’s what we know about him.
Who is this man?
Wallen got his start on The Voice’s sixth season in 2014. After being eliminated toward the end of the competition, he signed with an independent rock-music label and, two years later, graduated to a contract with a Nashville-based entertainment company, Big Loud. From there, he really broke out thanks to a new mullet and a song called “Whiskey Glasses,” which sounds exactly how you are imagining it. Also, a lot of women apparently find him really hot — one famously horny comment on a 2020 photo of him leaning against a truck proclaimed, “Lord have mercy im bout to bust.”
In more official indicators of professional success, he’s released three studio albums and broken a handful of Billboard records.
Why was he arrested?
Wallen was arrested around 11 p.m. Sunday night outside Chief’s on Broadway, a Nashville honky-tonk bar that his fellow country musician Eric Church opened in March. Per a police report, officers were standing outside the bar when a chair landed intact on the ground several feet from them. Staff members reportedly told the officers Wallen had thrown the chair from six stories above, and police say they viewed footage of him “lunging and throwing an object over the roof.” The report also says witnesses saw Wallen “pick up the chair” and “throw it,” “laughing afterward.”
Wallen was detained and charged with disorderly conduct and three counts of reckless endangerment. He appears to have smiled for his mugshot before being released on a $15,250 bond around 3:30 a.m. He’s expected to appear in court on May 3.
On Monday, Wallen’s attorney confirmed that the musician had been arrested for reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct, was released on bail, and is “cooperating fully with authorities.”
Is this his first arrest?
Wallen is no stranger to legal trouble, particularly when it’s the result of a rowdy night out. Somehow, this is not even his first time being arrested outside a musician-owned honky-tonk in Nashville. He was charged with a DUI in 2016, which was ultimately dismissed, but his first major brush with the law happened in May 2020. Wallen was kicked out of Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock n’ Roll Steakhouse — a real place that counts Tucker Carlson among its customers — and arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct. The arrest report says Wallen was “kicking glass items” and getting into verbal fights with people on the street. He tweeted an apology the following day, writing that he and “a few old friends” were “horse-playing with each other” and “didn’t mean any harm,” but that he was “sorry to any bar staff or anyone that was affected.” His case was settled two months later, when a judge decided not to prosecute.
Later in 2020, Saturday Night Live canceled Wallen’s musical guest spot after TikTok videos showed him partying with fans at the University of Alabama. The festivities, which appeared to involve a 27-year-old Wallen making out with several college students, seemed to have happened largely without masks or social distancing, and Wallen said in an apology video that Saturday Night Live had disinvited him for violating the set’s COVID-19 protocols. “My actions this past weekend were pretty shortsighted,” he said on Instagram, “and they’ve obviously affected my long-term goals and my dreams.” He ended up performing on the showtwo months later.
You mentioned a racial slur?
Wallen found himself in hot water again in 2021 when TMZ leaked a video reportedly recorded by a neighbor that showed him calling one of his friends the N-word. In a statement published with the video, Wallen told TMZ he “used an acceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back.” Following the video, he was suspended from his music label “indefinitely,” dropped from his agency, WME, and pulled from radio stations and some Apple and Spotify playlists. The Academy of Country Music pledged to “halt” his eligibility for its 2021 awards, and the Country Music Association barred him from attending its 2021 ceremony, despite being nominated for Album of the Year.
A little over a week after the TMZ leak, Wallen posted an apology video, where he asked fans not to defend him. “The video you saw was me on hour 72 of a 72-hour bender,” he said. “Since that video was taken, I’ve been sober for nine days.” He also said he had been working with “amazing Black organizations” to help make amends. Meanwhile, the sales of his just-released album spiked in the wake of the incident, and it stayed at the top of the “Billboard 200” chart for seven weeks straight.
What’s happened since then?
On top of his unvarnished popularity with fans, a lot of the fallout has since been walked back. Less than six months after the leaked video — around the time the Country Music Association quietly put some of Wallen’s music back on its eligibility ballot — he made a triumphant return to performing at his favorite haunt, Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky Tonk & Steakhouse. In June 2021 he told Michael Strahan in a big Good Morning America interview that he had donated his album sales, which he estimated to be $500,000, to groups supporting Black musicians — though when Rolling Stonetried to track down where this sum had gone, the Black Music Action Coalition said it was “disappointed” with his efforts and called his statement “misleading.” A year after pulling him from consideration, the Academy of Country Music awarded him Album of the Year in 2022. Last year, his third studio album spent 12 weeks at the top of the “Billboard200,” breaking a 30-year record.
Something tells me Wallen might not be too concerned about how this latest incident will affect his sales?
By Danielle Cohen , 2024-04-09 21:29:11
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