album review: 'dangerous: the double album' by morgan wallen

…when I planned to reboot my solo album reviews in earnest, I did not expect that Morgan Wallen would be the first and most obvious candidate on the docket.

But that’s because for the past few years I’ve been both fascinated and frustrated by Morgan Wallen’s apparent rise within Nashville country, because on the surface it doesn’t seem to make much sense at all. For one, he got his big break off The Voice - not on Blake Shelton’s team, I should add, which is relevant talking about Nashville traction - but then he was working with Florida Georgia Line on one of their impressively stupid songs, is signed to their label, and has a lot of production credits from their long-time producer Joey Moi, so it sets up an expectation surrounding his sound and presentation that on the surface he seemed to indulge. But something seemed different here - he was a little moodier, a little more reckless - which apparently has translated to his personal life in frustratingly irresponsible ways - but also a little more self-aware, he’d show up and cover a Jason Isbell song…

And if it was just his artistic instincts, that’d be one thing, but what grabbed more of my attention was his marketing push, specifically surrounding ‘7 Summers’, a pretty good song that rode a lot of TikTok success to the top ten on the mainstream charts, and while Nashville learning how to play the streaming game has absolutely helped Wallen here, it felt odd to see him get this much traction when it didn’t seem like he had the popular groundswell to get there. For comparison, it took Luke Combs a considerable bit longer to find his mainstream chart success, but it also came with the sort of sustained organic growth over 4-5 years - the Luke Combs base that continues to buy albums reminds me a lot of the older base behind the neotraditional revival in the late 80s and early 90s - Morgan Wallen feels targeted at a younger audience, which might explain why he got so much traction when the label pressed the button behind him. And make no mistake: Morgan Wallen would not be allowed to release a double album in 2021 with thirty songs if he did not have major label support - his debut sold well but not on the level that it would need to get this shipped, even with singles that have already moved, but since his label Big Loud is working with Republic on this, that tells me there’s a lot of the machine behind this project. And again, this is a double album running an hour and a half - the last time I remember a double album getting release traction in Nashville it was The Weight Of These Wings by Miranda Lambert, and she was in the industry over a decade - the circumstances behind that were considerably different. But then I just got cynical - of course he’s doing a double album, stream trolling is still a thing, even if a little out of fashion, but Nashville is always behind the times. So… I don’t even know if I had expectations proper, given I was generally lukewarm on a long of the songs he previewed, so what did we get with this?

Well, we got something that we often see with double albums: where it’s clear Morgan Wallen made enough music to fill two distinctive projects and instead of weeding out the very best songs for one great album, he mashed them together for a project where there are legit strong moments that struggle for air amidst all the bloat. But the larger problem is one of these disks feels of considerably higher quality, and thus creates a juxtaposition between the more thoughtful and introspective singer-songwriter he could be… and the braying, bro-country act from where he started; guess what disc is of higher quality.

Now keep in mind this is coming from the critic who does believe there’s a gradient of quality within bro-country, and I can at least hear how the braying, nasal texture of Wallen’s voice would in theory be a natural fit for the subgenre with the obvious Florida Georgia Line parallel, in that it would at least stand out. But the issues with bro-country I had were always more tied to questionable production and by-the-numbers list-driven content, and when it falls into a comparison with attempts at actual storytelling that fill up the first half of the album… even if it’s authentic to his real experience, which it very well might be, due to the overexposure of the formula it feels generic as hell. Now this is coming from someone who’s been immersed in the scene for years now, where I can also say it feels a bit like a label move that you’d expect of someone signed to Big Loud - they need the party bangers at some point especially after how dreary the album otherwise is, but I’m not sure Morgan Wallen is the person to sell them. The first half of the album sinks into midtempo, minor key dirges opposite the watery guitars - electric and bizarrely acoustic as well - that are quickly becoming a trademark of Wallen’s sound, where even if I think the programmed trap and snap percussion doesn’t work, I can at least understand why someone thought it would. And while I’m complaining about production, I don’t know how the multi-tracked vocals sound so consistently thin and filmy or why the cymbals are always a little too prominent - you’d think for a project steeping itself in yearning and brooding would have some lower-register heaviness, but that’s also asking Joey Moi to mic a bassline properly, which unfortunately is a problem holding over from his work in the bro-country era. But take a song like ‘Outlaw’ which features Wallen’s frequent cowriter Ben Burgess, which is absolutely rooted in southern rock chord progressions, and you can’t let that electric guitar to roar louder or harder than your acoustic line, or how the cymbals are closer to the front on ‘Beer Don’t’, or how it all turns into embarrassing overmixed mush on ‘Somethin’ Country’? Or better question, why is a sloppy country mix of the Diplo song ‘Heartless’ even here?

That being said, the windswept wistfulness of ‘Sand In My Boots’ and ‘7 Summers’, the bleary regret of ‘Neon Eyes’, the smoldering regret of ‘Only Thing That’s Gone’ with Chris Stapleton, and of course the wallop that’s his cover of Jason Isbell’s ‘Cover Me Up’, there are moments where I hear an artist who is looking to create more thoughtful or emotionally complex material. Hell, I might think ‘Living The Dream’ is produced as liquid ass, but showing the sodden downside of fame after a disc stacked with party songs could almost feel subversive, especially given how often this album retreats to the bottle. But this is where ‘Cover Me Up’ is both a blessing and a curse on this project, because not only is it the best written song here, it’s also a song you really can’t detach from Jason Isbell’s voice… and specifically his struggle to get sober that came on Southeastern. So I get using it as an album centerpiece and it flows well into ‘7 Summers’, but setting it before a disc stacked with more drinking throws your sequencing into serious question… or does it? I mentioned the generally watery tone across this album, and if you’re comparing it to the bright energy of Jake Owen or even Florida Georgia Line, it creates an oddly dejected vibe to the parties, where they feel more out of obligation, which could be an interesting flip that would fit with chunks of the first half and even late album cuts like ‘This Bar’ or ‘Silverado For Sale’… but by the time you get to ‘Beer Don’t’ and ‘Blame It On Me’ and especially ‘Somethin’ Country’ and ‘Country A$$ Shit’, you get the depressing feeling that it’s all being played straight and we’ve been down this dirt road before. What’s worse is that with the overmixed, desaturated production it feels even more interchangeable - the cliches just wash over me and it’s not like Wallen’s delivery or the production can elevate any of it. And yeah, the breakup song that closes out the album is a nice, understated touch, but it’s bookending a bloated project that needed better sequencing and could have easily been chopped down.

And that’s why this double album feels so strange to me, because it’s a mess of contradictions, and I feel like Big Loud is probably more responsible for them than Wallen is, where I somehow wind up feeling more sympathetic to him here! My hypothesis is that he turned in an album that’s more low-key and understated and moody - ergo, the first half where the writing is measurably better and less obviously cliched and there’s a Jason Isbell cover and collaboration with Chris Stapleton. But since it didn’t have the upbeat bro-country that was his debut and Music Row is obsessed with consistent branding even for a budding superstar, they pushed him to make the considerably worse second disc or repurposed leftovers from his debut, shifted certain cuts to force cohesion, and gambled on stream-trolling to justify the double album. And thus the entire project feels misshapen and bloated - the sequencing is a mess, the production is scattered enough to feel distracting but not varied enough to help chunks of the album stand out, and Morgan Wallen’s good moments are drowned out in obvious compromises because the album is thirty songs and over an hour and a half! I do think there’s a good album here, especially off the first disc, but judging as a whole… light 5/10, pick and choose the songs you like, and bizarrely enough, by the end I wanted to like this more, so take that as you will.