OPE! Mixtape #68: Morgan Wallen

Morgan's new album 'I'm The Problem' has the imagination of a lottery ticket. Plus, this week's mixtape has Survive Said The Prophet, MAVI, Alex G, and more.

Welcome to OPE!, the newsletter by writer and music journalist Brady Gerber. This is the home of my weekly column and where I curate the week’s best links and songs. All typos are intentional.

Well, hello there. How are you?

Yes ‘Cers. I’m so excited for my Pacers making it to the finals. Congrats to the Knicks for a tough series and for having a great season; as a former New Yorker, I would have been happy to root for them in the finals. Onto OKC.

TAGABOW photo credit: Brian Karlsson

On this week’s podcast, I wrote about They Are Gutting a Body a Water and their new song “AMERICAN FOOD.” This band, shortened to TAGABOW, is beloved by a certain circle of unemployed music critics who credit them with helping revive shoegaze. I wouldn’t go that far, but they capture a mystique comparable to Black Country, New Road, except they don’t suck. “AMERICAN FOOD” caught me off guard. I’m not sure if I like it, but I think it’s fascinating, so I wanted to talk about it.

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For new subscribers: the OPE! Music podcast is an extension of this newsletter, in which I choose one song from the past week’s mixtape and review it. The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. Like and subscribe, as they say.

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I’m The Problem, out now, if you dare

But anyway, Morgan Wallen.

To show my cards: I still love “I Had Some Help.”

“I Had Some Help” is Wallen’s collaboration with Post Malone, which was the lead single off Malone’s 2024 “I’m now a country bro because Internet rap no longer hits the zeitgeist and I’d rather sell records” album F-1 Trillion, an album that feels as dangerous and seductive as a Zara cowboy hat.

I think “I Had Some Help” is a compelling song. More importantly, it showcases what makes Wallen work as a vessel for modern country radio. A Bud Light slur with the grace of a well-fitted white tank top. The feeling of getting drunk with someone who wears Carhartt jackets but, get this, has built something with power tools. A muddy Ford F150 truck that’ll get me to Sweetgreen. The confidence of a man who can wear a hat. These are the images I daydream of while listening to “I Had Some Help,” because lord knows Wallen is boring as shit to look at.

So, essentially, Morgan Wallen is great when he has a foil like Malone, or he’s pretending to be Malone, who oozes charisma and is ~just~ a little better at hiding that he’s using auto-tune. Still, Wallen makes his limited vocal range effective in the context of the song, and genre, that most values the impression of authenticity. Wallen is not a fantastic technical singer. Neither is Willie Nelson.

As much as I would like to write off Wallen as anti-woke karaoke for idiots (obviously these idiots aren’t aware that we’ve entered a golden age of conservative DEI) (I’m an idiot too, but in more interesting ways), I understand and appreciate Wallen’s appeal, as someone who likes modern country more than the average rock critic, especially a song like “I Had Some Help,” which is well-crafted. These top-line melodies are great; every instrument sounds expensive and pristine. The Nashville machine, as they say.

It’s literally the Shane Gillis joke about why white people like country music:

If it seems like I’m getting off topic, I have conflicting feelings about Gillis that are relevant to how I feel about Wallen.

I find half of Gillis’s jokes fantastic. ISIS Toyota, no notes. HR Meeting is one of SNL’s better recent skits. The other half, like his insistence on lame autism jokes, sucks. Gillis is the best-case scenario of “Well, I’m not disabled, but I think disabled jokes are funny, so this must be funny,” which is not saying a lot. With Gillis, at least, I think he’s smart enough, or at least self-aware enough, as a performer to pick and choose his indulgences. He’ll do shitty autism jokes, but then he’ll move on to making fun of everyone else. In his own way, he has range.

Unlike Morgan Wallen.

After listening to Wallen’s new album I’m The Problem, I realized something new: he has anti-range. I’m The Problem, which is still the number one album in the country at the writing of this column, has nothing as compelling as “I Had Some Help.” Not even close. And there are 37 songs on this album.

Who the duck told Morgan Wallen that releaseing a 37-track album was a good idea.

A Spotify executive?

OK, yes, that tracks. The age of music wallpaper carries on, yada yada yada. (How many times have I shared this link in this newsletter?)

Still. Holy shoot. This album is too, too long. I listened to the whole thing in one setting. That was a mistake. I could have cooked soup instead. I could have taken a walk. I could have asked ChatGPT to define the term for people in positions of power who go out of their way to be offended and hide behind victim mentality because they were once criticized or didn’t get what they wanted. (I asked ChatGPT: the term is “loser.”)

According to Apple Music, I’m The Problem is one hour and 57 minutes. That’s too long. That’s one hour and 56 minutes and 20 seconds longer than any momtok influencer fact-checking anything. That’s a few minutes longer than Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, which I watched the night before I started writing this week’s column. Wallen’s label probably gave him a larger budget than any amount Altman ever got for his films, but Wallen wishes he had the shaggy charm of a 35-year-old Elliott Gould, a rambler who at least knew how to keep your attention, powered by Altman’s unique point of view. Or maybe Wallen doesn’t know who Altman is, so he’s not bothered. It’s probably the latter.

The peak of the album is its titular album opener. I like it because it sounds like a Goose song. The line “If I’m the problem, you might be the reason,” which is positioned as a Wallen micdrop, sums up the mental gymnastics you’ll have to do as a listener to understand what Wallen is, like, going through.

In the middle of the album’s eighth song, “Skoal, Chevy, and Browning,” I had to check to see if I could remember any of the song titles. Nope. Twenty-nine more songs to go.

“TN” has a decent chorus melody. It’s a pretty line that feels attainable for anyone to sing along to. It’s smart to make music that’s easy to sing along to in a stadium, if you are, in fact, an artist playing stadiums.

It’s nice to hear Eric Church again, even if he’s just a glorified harmonizer on “Number 3 and Number 7.”

Other than that, I got nothing.

I spent way more time on my intro this week because I can’t think of anything more to say about the literal music on this album. I know that the job of the modern music critic is to do free PR for TikTok and celebrity brands, or to host a podcast talking about the current state of music journalism instead of doing any actual journalism, and much of Wallen’s rise as a music celebrity comes from how much non-country fans hate him and his embracement of being hated by people who are easily offended … which includes most music journalists. I’m The Problem fully leans into this imagery and is designed like a dopamine torpedo for people who can sum up their political beliefs on a t-shirt.

But my guy, we’re not in 2014 anymore. I just can’t think of anything else to say in the service of making Morgan Wallen seem worthy of all these streams or angry gripes. I’m always game to engage with music beloved by a lot of people whom I don’t always agree with or even like. This implies, however, that I’m The Problem has music and not just TikTok snippets. He’s not worth it.

Wallen does have a problem, but it’s not the one he’s promoting. A lot of people like this kind of inoffensive country radio. I like it sometimes, too. A lot of people also poop, but that doesn’t mean they look forwad to it.

What a waste of time.

But enough about all that. Here are this week’s best links and songs …

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