Morgan Wallen

Morgan Wallen takes an age to go almost nowhere new on I’m The Problem.

From a former The Voice contestant to chart-topping albums and recent collaborations with Post Malone, Morgan Wallen is cementing his status in both the country and mainstream music scenes.

Across his three previous LPs, the Tennessee native has been developing a reputation for relationships, booze, and breakups. As Slant journalist Paul Attard noted regarding his third studio album, One Thing at a Time:

“His music is typically concerned with one of three things: getting shitfaced, being lovesick, or Jesus.”

And just in case you think we’re exaggerating about the length, both Dangerous: The Double Album and One Thing at a Time, his second and third LPs, comprise 30 and 36 songs, respectively.

This brings us to the latest juggernaut titled I’m The Problem. A juggernaut because (A) it went straight to number one on the Billboard album chart, and (B) because it’s two hours long.

So, how does the former reality contestant use this extravagant running time? Relationships, booze, and breakups. Then throw in love of God and the South, and you have a very, very, very long Wallen experience.

If you’re irritated about us repeating ourselves just then, you have some idea of what it was like listening to I’m The Problem. Across 37 tracks, we wallow over women, expound on the virtues of good ole country livin’, Chevy trucks, and, of course, marinate everything in copious amounts of alcohol. Oh, and God also gets His name checked from time to time.

Sadly, the project is a country cliché checklist from almost start to finish.

We say “almost” because, despite the safe nature of the record, there is still quality on show. Opener and title track ‘I’m the Problem’ is one such case.

Wallen sarcastically sings:

“You hate that when you look at me, you halfway see yourself, and it got me thinkin’, if I’m the problem, you might be the reason.”

The lines are fiery, defiant, and a well-crafted play on the usually downtrodden admission. It’s a feel-good and fresh way to flip the script.

This proves to be an all-too-rare occurrence on such a mammoth offering. There are quality moments throughout, but for the most part, the album plays it infuriatingly safe.

Another early success is ‘Just in Case’. The Grammy nominee brings the vocal ache as he tries to move on with his latest flame, while still holding a piece of his heart for the love that could not be.

Wallen croons:

“Pull her real close, but I leave some space, yeah, I could have three words on my tongue, but I won’t ever say ’em.”

The singer has a strong voice, capable of southern charm, with a hint of rasp and a dose of soul. This concoction is just right to play the contented lover one moment and mourning misery the next.

Meanwhile, the second song on the album, ‘I Got Better’, finds the storyteller emerging from the pain, feeling better by the second, as the listener is grounded in charming small-town quirks.

“Everything’s still pretty much the same ‘round here, my neighbours still shootin’ all of next year’s deer, boys still lose ‘less they’re playin’ at home, but I got better since you got gone.”

The references will be niche to most, unless they like shooting Bambi’s mother, but they serve the song with a feeling of authenticity. We are meeting a man gradually recovering from pain and heartache, while the unique mundanities quietly roll on.

This deft touch does not last.

If you’re looking for a different kind of lovesick, then don’t you worry, the angst buffet is open for business.

If you want a song about moping because you left a perfectly good relationship, try ‘Falling Apart’. If you want a song about angrily moping because you were cheated on, then it’s ‘Kiss Her in Front of You’. Oh, and if you want to ruminate about why you can’t change, then ‘Kick Myself’ is your cup of tea.

Taken on their own, these are all engaging tracks in their way. ‘Kick Myself’ is the album’s rawest version of straightforward self-reflection. The former reality show contestant lays it bare when he sings:

“Don’t think I’m doing myself any favours, favours, since I, kicked the bottle, kicked the bag,
scratched the Broadway off the map, maybe that’d work if I was someone else…”

If that doesn’t rip your heartstrings out, then the melancholy reaches its conclusive peak as Wallen adds:

“Did my best, but I just can’t kick myself.”

While Wallen and his team seldom take the risk of changing things up, when they do, they succeed. ‘Jack and Jill’ changes the format from a diary entry of personalised sorrow to dramatic tale chronicling the highs and lows of a dreaming couple.

In less than four minutes, we move from two dreamers head over heels for each other to the depths of betrayal and death. In a welcome shift, the listener is treated to a narrative arc, with basic allusions and a biblical reference that isn’t merely surface level.

The song is still very accessible, but it doesn’t hand everything to the audience straight up, like practically everything else on display. On four albums’ worth of material, there’s nothing close to ‘Jack and Jill’. It’s a compelling story in keeping with the best traditions of the genre.

There are brief diversions away from the album’s heartache, but these are seldom and hit-and-miss.

‘Number 3 and Number 7’ welcomes Eric Church to the recording booth to brighten things up with the devil-may-care tune about taking crazy risks and getting into trouble, even if “it don’t add up to much good.”

In the less rewarding bracket, ‘Come Back As a Redneck’ is a sarcastic whinge about a city slicker who briefly looked at the precious country boy the wrong way. ‘Don’t We’ also basks in the glory of humble South living.

The back-to-back duo are intended to be rah-rah anthems defending and instilling the virtue of a way of life, but they just come across as dull ways to tick a box in an album littered with cliché.

Frankly, this is a bit of a letdown given there are enough songwriters to fill an entire honky-tonk. Reports differ as to how many exactly there are. The site Whiskey Riff calculates a whopping “52”, while competitor Music Row’s abacus has it at an oh-so-low “49”.

With so much professional talent on the books, you would expect the quality to be free-flowing — but alas, quantity does not equate to quality.

To illustrate this point, the song ‘TN’ finds our lothario pondering where his extinguished flame might be. The star threatens to rap as he rhymes:

“There ain’t enough sad songs down in Nashville, ain’t enough moonshine up in them hills to give her a good reason to come on back to me in TN, it’s still got the JD in a Dixie and the UT on the TV…”

These lines of lament took seven writers, according to credits listed by YouTube Music. It’s not exactly Shakespeare, but admittedly, it is quite catchy.

It seems the writers’ room was constantly at capacity during the creative process. To quote Whiskey Riff once more, there is an average of “4.89 co-writers”.

The collection hides within it many enjoyable moments, but buried across almost 40 tracks, they fail to hide a multitude of sins.

With two hours to play with, a listener might be expecting something of an audible adventure, or at least a narrative arc. You know the kind: where our flawed but affable hero fights his demons to become a better or at least a different kind of person from when we first met him.

The collection is overflowing with challenge and heartbreak, with a dash of Jack Daniel’s-drenched self-reflection. But an epic saga I’m The Problem is not.

Instead, the work goes round and round in circles. Lovers drop in and out, leaving our self-flagellating narrator to pick up before jumping into the next rendezvous.

This on its own is not a problem. After all, the music industry is built on musicians being passionately in love one song, and playing the scorned ex in the next. The real problem is that everything sounds very samey.

Joey Moi returns to the production booth, having worked on all three of the singer’s long-form projects to date, including this one.

Given the themes of this latest attempt, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the Canadian has previously helped steer the ship with acts like rockers Nickelback and bro-country favourites Florida Georgia Line.

This manifests in the form of pop beats and a primarily gentle rock sound that politely avoids turning the amp up to maximum. All filtered through a commercial country lens.

Of course, there are exceptions, but much of the album feels musically restrained, lacking a bit of standout sparkle.

Perhaps due to the album’s extravagant running time, sonically, tracks seldom stand out and instead sorrowfully merge into each other. The musicianship is slick in both performance and production, but for the most part, the record’s sound can’t escape the charge of being run-of-the-mill.

‘Working Man’s Song’ proves that there are exceptions to every rule.

The tune channels righteous anger about the plight of the nine-to-fiver. Wallen cranks up the vocal and brings the energy in a stamping, thumping rock number. An electric guitar is even allowed to cut loose and give us something to headbang to, rather than merely bob along with.

It’s fun, it’s freeing, and it’s tucked away at track 31.

Morgan first came to prominence on the TV show The Voice but was booted off early in season six. Based on the evidence of this latest outing, the judges were suffering from hearing issues that day.

The musician’s voice is strong and confident. His southern-accented chords are built to convey liquor, love, and loss. There’s even a tinge of smoky flavour that adds to his vocal appeal.

Unfortunately, even as the 32-year-old shows his chops, he still can’t hold off the monotony. The main crime this time around is the over-reliance on artificial vocal effects echoing around his voice. Add this to the all-too-similar production, and you have a problem.

Overall, I’m The Problem has some solid to impressive moments. If the album were even as long as an hour, we would be having a different conversation.

Sadly, at double that, there’s no room for songs to breathe or feel distinct. Worse, once you start to notice the constant references to alcohol, you also start to notice how often the record tries to prove its country roots. Chevys, rednecks, hunting, and whingeing about city folk are all there to tick a box.

Oh, and did we mention there’s booze? Lots and lots of booze.

The streaming age means that consumers no longer buy albums in the way they once did. Even so, this project would have benefited from being split into multiple offerings.

Releasing it separately across various streaming platforms would have given the audience a built-in break, a chance to take in what they’ve just heard and then feel good about the next chapter.

The songs on this project are usually decent in their own right, but when put together, it feels as if the album is stuck in an eternal loop — much like the protagonists within.