What Morgan Wallen's new album 'One Thing at a Time' says about country's mainstream moment

Morgan Wallen's not just a country or pop superstar anymore.

Contemplate a performer on a level eclipsing the success of Florida Georgia Line and Nickelback over the past two decades and you're somewhere in the realm of what the East Tennessee native has achieved.

For Big Loud Records co-owner and lead producer Joey Moi, Wallen's success makes sense. As the mastermind behind the renown achieved by Florida Georgia Line, whose 2012 Nelly duet "Cruise" achieved 14-times platinum status, Nickelback, the rock act responsible for selling over 50 million albums in the 2000s, Moi may be the only person able to contextualize Wallen's success.

"Morgan is incredibly special and rare," Moi says to the USA TODAY Network. Wallen's third album, "One Thing At A Time," came out March 3.

"His voice does not limit how far his talent can reach, be that in country, pop, rock, alternative. He makes every genre sound like his own."

More:Morgan Wallen's surprise show rocked Gibbs High School – one big clue all but gave it away

Nickelback has also been called "the most hated band in the world." Florida Georgia Line was once regarded as making "bad, loathsome" music.

Wallen's album, may — for many observers — lead the 29-year-old from Sneedville, Tennessee, to become the most "hated" and "loathsome" artist in popular music.

The reasons for such repugnance are many. How the album bears the weight of this antagonism, yet still allows for Wallen to shine, is important.

Moreover, how Wallen matures in this era of his life while balancing his art and humanity is also important.

The album is 36-tracks long. Much of this is owed to Wallen's fans streaming his Academy of Country Music Album of the Year award-winning "Dangerous: The Double Album" over 5 billion times since its 2021 release. It also reflects that everyone from rap superstar Drake to upstart country crooner Zach Bryan have released playlist-style mega "albums" in the past five years.

"This is definitely an album meant for those who have leaned in, hardcore, to what [Morgan] is doing," England says.

He adds that passive fans coming into country music during its most recent pop iteration are sure to find the album, and given that two dozen of the genre's best songwriters are credited here, the album's lyrical content will "hit and stick" with them.

"Constantly discovering the great creators has been our recipe for success," Moi says. "My closest buddies are our songwriters. Exploiting their innovative and progressive creativity allows us to create projects like ["One Thing at a Time"].

"There are so many bright, new and young writers on ["One Thing at a Time"] who haven't had Nashville's expectations jade them," says England.

"Man Made a Bar" features Wallen's longtime inspiration Eric Church and tells a heartwarming outlaw story of a man being counseled through his problems by a local bartender, who has also been the owner-operator of his establishment since his first divorce in 1985.

When the words "I, too, have been in your boots, my friend" are sung, the heavy guitar feedback under Wallen's vocals offers every sense of tying the song to both late 1970s country and late 2000s rock.

Notably, too, the rock chord-meets-rap kick-drum pattern on "I Wrote the Book" feels invitingly warm to anyone who believes that good music died when Creed originally disbanded in June 2004.

"When I moved to Nashville from Vancouver, I thought the style was as simple as making rock songs and putting a banjo under them," jokes Moi.

"However, the second I heard Jason Aldean's 'Hicktown,' I thought, 'Drop D riffs, huge drum fills and screams in your choruses are in country music now? I think I can do this.'"

Wallen's ability to neither explain away his problems nor sweep them under the rug is prominent here, too. They're merely drowned in the imbibing of an incredible laundry list of elixirs and substances that the "Whiskey Glasses" crooner now sings about enjoying.

Couple that with the slew of red-lipstick-wearing blond women and stiletto heel-clad bachelorettes meandering through his jet-set existence, and the amount of carousing he's done in relation to how much he's contemplated family and music becomes apparent.

He's neither the first nor last country artist to dive into this type of behavior with such depth, ownership and power on record. From Johnny Cash to Hank Williams Jr. most prominently, a lineage exists.

"[Taking] a shot of cocaine [before shooting your] woman down" isn't exactly described here. However, much of Wallen's latest represents the closest the genre's mainstream expectation has come to these notions in four decades.

What stands out about the album, alongside perhaps an addictive personality, is Wallen's ability to interpret contemporary R&B via a classic country lens.

For years, the vocalist has raved about how he's felt Country Music Hall of Famer Keith Whitley is one of his greatest inspirations. Had the "I'm No Stranger to the Rain" vocalist lived past his 33rd birthday opportunities for his smooth drawl to infiltrate mainstream R&B styles — think in a manner somewhere between Kenny Rogers and Conway Twitty — might have occurred.

On the "One Thing at a Time" track eponymously named for the "Kentucky Bluebird" and written by Wallen's cousin Jared Mullins along with Thomas Archer and Brad Clawson, what England refers to as "being a stylistic originator" is where Wallen attempts, more significantly than ever, to pick up where Whitley's legacy remained for three decades.

"I think Morgan feels like he can now achieve a level where he can create truly brilliant, unique music — like the types of things Keith Whitley made," England says. "His ear's ability to now differentiate between a song that he believes is good for a moment, as compared to one that challenges him to be great, has allowed him to develop art that I believe reflects his best self."

Regarding unique music, the track "180 (Lifestyle)" flips Rich Gang, Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan's 2015 single "Lifestyle." Clearing the song for sampling required Wallen's team to take an unprecedented step.

For the past nine months, Young Thug (born Jeffery Lamar Williams) has been jailed in Georgia after being denied bail pending a 56-count racketeering case and seven additional felonies related to possession of illegal substances and illegal firearms. The charges allege that Thug participated in gang activity and criminal conspiracies.

"You know what ... went through my mind when Seth called me and needed ["180"'s] 'Lifestyle' sample cleared," says hip-hop impresario Kevin Liles, Charman and CEO, 300 Elektra Entertainment. "I told him he had to send the demo to me, immediately. [Thankfully], it was honorable, loving, respectful and truthful to being a rap record from a modern country perspective."

"[Morgan] is a creative person who tells a true story and loves hip-hop music and culture."

The song, like Wallen's 2022 Lil Durk duet "Broadway Girls," has immediate urban radio crossover potential. "Broadway Girls" reached No. 1 on Billboard's U.S. R&B/Hip-Hop chart, and placed in the top 20 overall on the Hot 100.

"180" highlights taking one of those "Broadway Girls" Wallen can't "leave alone" and after some time dating her, turning her into a "red dirt wild child," who has exchanged her high heels on concrete streets for "[chasing] the moonlight" barefoot in a corn field.

"["180"] transcends genres," Liles adds.

Moreover, the ERNEST duet "Cowgirls" tucks classic country intonations around, into, through and under a pulsing hip-hop beat. If Lower Broadway and Midtown's dance floors needed (another) anthem, it's here.

While none of these are at quite the level of Whitley singing about a bi-coastal love affair gone right in 1985's "Miami, My Amy," they are notable records that meld formats and develop unprecedented genre-blurring bridges.

"[Morgan's] passion about searching for authenticity in how he portrays hip-hop has led him to beat-driven music," Moi says. "We've stripped down country music's traditions of intricate chord structures down to four-bar loops to serve the contemporary pop marketplace that's clearly on board with some of what he's trying to accomplish."

Wallen's attempt to atone for his February 2021 use of a racial slur has not, as of this printing, advanced further than his remarks on "Good Morning America" with host Michael Strahan six months later. There, Wallen said he met with the Black Music Action Coalition, record executive Liles, executive vice president and chief people and inclusion officer at Universal Music Group Eric Hutcherson, and gospel singer BeBe Winans for conversations about making what he described then as an "ignorant" statement.

If looking for the latest regarding this transgressions, including "Don't Think Jesus" among the album's 36 songs is noteworthy.

Described as "a big ol' hug from the man upstairs" to Wallen by the song's co-writer Jessi Alexander, upon hearing it after a round of golf, Wallen "cried in [his truck]."

"To hell with you, ain't no helpin' you” / Find someone else to give heaven to, I'm tellin' you / I'd shame me, I'd blame me, I'd make me pay for my mistakes / But I don't think Jesus does it that way," the song states.

To revisit the USA TODAY Network's review of his March 2022 concert appearances at Bridgestone Arena, wrapping an apology for racism into a plea for religious salvation is akin to the dog-whistling of hillbilly antagonism while soundtracking the mindless inebriation involved in hearing Wallen's 2021-released "Country A-- S---."

A mullet-wearing white man who has famously uttered a specific disparaging word leading a crowd of predominantly white people singing that they want the "sun [to] put some more red on [their necks]" can feel more like "hate not heritage."

Similarly, placating a certain type of rural Southern religiosity triggers echoes the Nixon era's focus on "backlash politics" against the civil rights movement.

There is no simple manner by which Wallen or his team will ever be able to adequately address the issue or how the pain it caused, on a larger level, is a direct link to country music culture's history of unfettered racism. It's an indelible stain upon a career that has grown and will continue to grow with and without the moment having a causal link to sectors of his popularity and derision.

"I don’t expect this album to do what 'Dangerous' did," Wallen said in a press statement. "I don’t. I’m a realist. Because that damn thing is still in the top five. That just doesn’t happen. But I don’t set goal sheets. I make music that I like and I hope my fans like."

Moi notes that country's evolution from "singers of songs" to "artistic, authentic creatives making art" is best highlighted in this release.

Regarding his own views on his personal growth, Wallen cites the album track "Dying Man" as important.

"Codeine it got Elvis / Whiskey it got Hank / I always thought somethin’ like that / Might send me on my way."

Although the song details the relationship between a man and a woman, for the "Born With a Beer in My Hand" singer, becoming a father in 2020 changed his life.

"When [my son, Indigo] was born, giving me something different to live for," he says in a press statement.

"Morgan's taken a little license because he's grown from a skinny little redneck kid singing Eric Church's 'Talladega' in the wrong key to amassing a large fanbase that he can now step out and serve," Moi says.

"He's at a place where he's raised the bar on blending artistic credibility with down-home Southern style on anything he sings."

England summarizes his thoughts on the release and Wallen best with a final statement:

"That guy is passionate about knowing exactly who he is and released a 36-track album of largely deep, compelling music to reflect that."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: What Morgan Wallen's new album 'One Thing at a Time' says about country